Hulu is turning Spotify’s most popular playlist into a new docuseries, ‘RapCaviar Presents’ – TechCrunch

Spotify’s hip-hop playlist “RapCaviar” will now be a new documentary series on Hulu. The eight-episode docuseries “RapCaviar Presents” aims to address “today’s most provocative issues” through stories of top hip-hop artists like Tyler the Creator, Jack Harlow, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Saweetie and Roddy Ricch, according to Spotify.

The show will premiere on Hulu later this year, but an exact launch date was not offered.

The playlist and its companion podcast are touted for launching the careers of artists such as Migos, Lil Uzi Vert and Kyle. Getting a track featured on “RapCaviar” can result in millions of streams, great for emerging hip-hop artists looking to draw the attention of record labels.

Partnering with the streaming giant Hulu is a strategic move for Spotify as music documentaries have seen a jump in popularity with Hulu’s “Look at Me: XXXTentacion,” which dropped in May, as well as Hulu’s “Machine Gun Kelly’s Life in Pink” and “Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby” coming to Amazon Prime Video in August.

The podcast-to-streaming-docuseries pipeline has also been proven profitable in the past year with Hulu’s podcast-turned show “The Dropout,” Apple TV+’s “WeCrashed” and NBC’s “The Thing About Pam,” which streams on Hulu and Peacock. 

There’s even a fictionalized series about Spotify coming to Netflix. “The Playlist” will revolve around the music streaming service’s origin story and debuts later this year. Spotify worked with Netflix earlier this month to launch a personalized “Stranger Things” playlist dedicated to season 4 volume 2.

“RapCaviar Presents” will be executive produced by Karam Gill, who will also serve as creative director; Steve Rivo, who will also be the series showrunner; Carl Chery and Liz Gateley, who are overseeing creative on the show for Spotify; and Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman from The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC), a part of Sony Pictures Television.

Farah X, Karam Gill, Keith McQuirter, Mandon Lovett and Peter J. Scalettar are the episodic directors. Av Accius and Marcus A. Clarke will serve as co-executive producers.

The RapCaviar playlist was created by Spotify’s global head of Hip Hop Programming, Tuma Basa, and has an audience of more than 14 million people, per the company.

In other Spotify-related news, the company acquired the Wordle-inspired music guessing game Heardle earlier this week.