A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
AS A YOUNG TRANSGENDER artist growing up in Las Vegas, FEWOCiOUS — one of the digital art world’s fastest-rising stars — says music offered him an introduction to “what art is — and how to tell a story with your feelings.” Today, the 19-year-old’s digital creations have generated over $50 million — his Pride collection, auctioned by Christie’s last June, brought in more than $2 million — and music remains core to his art. For his FewoWorld “paint drop” on Nifty Gateway, a 24-hour public non-fungible token sale that generated $20 million, each collectible featured a unique audio composition. And he continues to draw inspiration from musicians ranging from Bob Dylan and David Bowie to Missy Elliott and Kanye West, whose works he sees as expressions of “authentic identity.”
For Pride Month this year, we invited FEWO to reimagine the Billboard logo to help us celebrate the diversity of music’s creators and consumers when it comes to gender and sexual orientation. In fact, a new report that we produced in partnership with Luminate and Queer Capita found that people who identify as queer spend $72 more per year on music on average than other consumers, are 20% more likely to buy merchandise and are 15% more interested in finding and listening to new and emerging artists. That report, “The Power of LGBTQ+ Music,” also found that LGBTQ+ Gen Z fans spent an average of $136 per month more on music than other listeners, as compared with $110 more per month for Gen Z, and were 78% more likely than their peers to listen to music on vinyl.
“The queer community is not some monolith that you can pander to occasionally,” our staff writer Stephen Daw said during a panel discussion about the report in May at the MusicBiz 2022 conference in Nashville. “We are out here spending more money than other groups.”
This issue also spotlights some of the queer artists shaping culture — and inspiring the next generation of creators, executives and fans to express their authentic selves. It’s a daunting challenge, given the discrimination still faced by so many, but one that, as FEWO has shown, can pay enormous dividends. We hope that telling the stories of these exciting successes will help illuminate some ways forward for many others to come. And we hope you enjoy seeing the Billboard logo the way
FEWO says he does: “When you look at the ‘B’ and the
‘D,’ it almost looks like two different people looking at each other. As you get to the center of the logo, it looks like they’re almost getting closer to each other, until eventually they’re holding hands. It’s a love story!”