Only Snapchat Could Turn A Plastic Surgeon into a Music Label Executive

In Hip-Hop's current Great Gatsby-esque paradigm, wherein everyone can become anyone or anything, Dr. Michael "Miami" Salzhauer has been able to moonlight as a music label executive. He has pulled off this feat by leveraging Snapchat to promote aspiring artists.

Given the seemingly comedic and casual angle of Salzhauer's activity with hip-hop artists, the lesson for any much more serious and musically-minded entrepreneur is a strong one: opportunity is often closer than you think.

New technologies will always create new markets and channels of distribution for the first actors in the arena. In other words, be the first to build something and then wait to be surprised by who's attracted to what you build.

Salzhauer's popularity transcends Snapchat, as he also enjoys an audience of nearly 400k on Instagram

Surg Recordz: Hip-Hop and Cosmetic Surgery's love Child

In April 2016, Dr. Miami appeared on the nationally syndicated radio show, The Breakfast Club, to discuss his work in cosmetic surgery, with considerable amounts of time being spent on breast and buttocks enhancements.

These specific procedures are ones which, one could say sadly, have become important parts of the "brand development" of female artists within the pop-segments of Hip-Hop and its sub-culture. With so much of the genre's popular rise feeding the appetite for misogyny and perceived financial success, Salzhauer has been able to transform himself into a very unique icon within this subculture and mainstream.

Dr. Sauzhauer discusses cosmetic surgery work and Hip-Hop with show host Charlamagne, a growing social icon himself

His strategy has been a near perfect blend of creativity, humor, voyeurism, virility, and as some would argue, cultural appropriation.

To market his surgeries, Dr. Miami started showing snippets of his procedures on Snapchat, a mobile messaging platform which has bursted with popularity during the past year. This marketing strategy, over time, morphed into, "Surg Recordz," a music label with 5 artists as of April 2016.

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As large segments of Hip-Hop continue to transform from a cultural underground into a pop genre, it seems that stars and celebrities within the genre rise with lightning speed. Mobile messaging apps are a big contributor of this central element of speed.

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"Our Snapchat is pretty popular...we have 1.7 million viewers a day...and we play music in the background during surgery" explained Salzhauer on The Breakfast Club.

"People kept sending in their own songs [or] songs they wanted us to play...and we're like, you know what?Send us your submissions, if we think they're good, we'll play them on the Snap Chat."

"[Surg Recordz] started out as half a joke, but we ended up signing 5 artists....we got a record label!"

Dr. Miami's performance on Snapchat has been so successful that he was nominated for a Shorty Award, an honor designated for social media users and innovators. Salzhauer came second in his category to DJ Khaled.

Scouting for New Talent is pretty effortless with Surg Recordz, given that their barebones website allows for electronic submissions of music

Surg Recordz: A Real Shift or a Flash in the Pan.

As large segments of Hip-Hop continue to transform from a cultural underground into a pop genre, it seems that stars and celebrities within the genre rise with lightning speed. Mobile messaging apps are a big contributor of this central element of speed.

However, as with anything fast paced, one wonders how quickly this growth of the genre via social media will simply burn out with the same speed with which it rose to prominence and social success.

Flash in the pan or a recipe to something substantive? Who knows.

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Medvis Jackson is a web designer at Hindsite, curator at Kulchah and avid cricket fan. You can follow him @medvisjackson for his random thoughts.

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