Some things just go naturally together … as if they were made for each other: Peanut butter and jelly. Cheese and crackers. Marijuana and music. A Seattle-based company wants to give cannabis consumers a chance to combine the last pair. Hi-Tunes, a new marijuana-focused music distribution service, announced this week it will begin offering pre-rolled joints with a QR code for free music downloads. Scott McKinley, co-founder of Hi-Tunes, said the concept will originally be unveiled in the state of Washington.
“Hi-Tunes is music distribution through marijuana”, McKinley told the website Complete Music Update. “We are giving artists their own branded marijuana lines to push. If they do well with joints and participate with stores in our Washington market, we will put out more products on that artist’s line, and we can get really creative and fun.”
A study released earlier this year suggests that the euphoria you experience while enjoying music is triggered by the same brain chemical system that gives humans pleasurable feelings associated with sex and recreational drugs. “This is the first demonstration that the brain’s own opioids are directly involved in musical pleasure,” says cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, senior author of the paper.
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Yoshi Gish is one artist willing to jump on board this innovative concept. “Scott approached me in 2016 with the concept of selling music with marijuana,” Gish told Complete Music Update. “I was looking for something new, just like this. Records, tapes and CDs are now so slow and bulky compared to our network, but now a simple scan on a smartphone can connect people with my music. I feel cannabis can influence many new avenues of distribution.”
McKinley sees the concept as the next iteration in music retail. “Music used to sell sheet music, then records and record players, tapes and tape players, CDs and CD players, MP3 players — and now music has nothing to sell. We intend to change that by matching music with marijuana. Smoke this, listen to that. It’s a beautiful concept,” he said.
