Audible Hype

Hip Hop 2009: Year of the Glut

2009-07-12T22:36:00Z

“You really can’t call it underground anymore; whatever that means now. When your biggest artist like a Soulja Boy is selling 40,000 in the first week, what’s underground? It’s kind of hard to put somebody in that box and I’m glad that box is going away.”

--9th Wonder from AllHipHop

Dropping an Album in 2009

You’ve poured months (years) of sweat into your songs, you’ve done hundreds of takes, you’ve spent weeks mixing it. You’ve gotten the album mastered, you’ve traded drugs + sneakers for badass cover art, you’ve saved up the money to get the CD manufactured. You’ve digitized your tracks, you’ve fixed up all your metadata, and you’ve submitted your album to itunes, Amazon, Emusic and more.

I’m going to tell you something most music biz blogs never will: you are completely fucked. You’re making hip hop, one of the most over-saturated genres of music on the planet in 2009. Your first official release is not a major landmark in anyone else’s life—it’s not even a blip on the radar screen. Although it’s true you’re “progressing” with an official release, it’s even more true that you’re just barely getting started with the hardest part.

The Big Picture

Here it is, in one paragraph:

Hip Hop, as a money-making album sales genre, peaked in the year 2000. That’s the year of Chronic 2001, Marshall Mathers, and Nelly’s Country Grammar. That’s the year that rap sales jumped over 20% and hit the all-time high water mark of 105.5 million units sold. Ever since then, those numbers have been nose-diving towards our current recession, which sees the trend reversed: in 2008, rap sales dropped 19.8%, hovering at over 33 million units.

Back in 2007, it got very fashionable to start talking about The End of Rap: Time, Newsweek, Fox News and the New York Times all got into the mix. (Then, of course, Fox News had to return and ask the burning question: IS HIP HOP GOING OUT OF STYLE?)

The Information Age is also a culture of amnesia: none of this was news, or even new. Entertainment Weekly was running the same conversation about 2001 album sales, and besides, the entire popular media conversation is basically reporters using Soundscan numbers and interviewing artists who know even less.

This is not all bad news, though. Looking outside the sales numbers, a different picture emerges. Digital downloads are increasing every year, the global market is growing daily and they prefer hip hop to rock, and online radio use jumped 33% in 2008. Especially good news for you and me: 2008 was the year that vinyl made a big-money comeback, moving a record 1.8 million units. And despite shrinking sales, the music business remains a $6 billion dollar economy. (If you really want money, though, you should be focused on passing bar exams and learning the commodities market. Those are much, much bigger economies.)

Just to keep those hopeful numbers in perspective...online radio has seen big growth but it’s still not a major competitor for your local FM station. That 33% jump in listeners adds up to 69 million listeners, but regular radio has 235 million. (In a country with 306 million humans total, that’s a pretty important demographic.) For digital downloads, the big picture is even worse. In 2007, there were 13 million songs available for sale online. 3 million of those sold. To put it mathematically, that means 77% of all the digital downloads in 2007 sold exactly zero copies.

When you’ve made an album, your odds are even worse:

According to SoundScan, 105,000 new full-length albums were released in 2008, up almost 300% from earlier in the decade. The number that sold over 1000 units in the first year? Only 6,000.

In other words, you’re competing with more people for less money, every year. Welcome to 2009.

“So Wait...I’m Just Fucked?”

Did you really think I’d just drop that on you without even mentioning some solutions?

1. More Planning, Less Marketing. Don’t focus on how many people you reach. Focus on making sure that when people want to find out about you, you’ve made it easy and interesting for them, every step of the way. Make sure they’ve got a means to contact you directly, and make sure they can spend money on your music if they want. Believe me—this sounds simple but it’s anything but. The amount of planning and work that goes into designing a profitable online business is absurd. (Rest assured, I am taking notes every step of the way, and I’ll be laying out the mistakes we’ve made so that you don’t have to repeat them.)

2. Organize Your Catalog At World Around, I’m lucky to have two artists who are basically willing test animals: DJ Multiple Sex Partners and Adam Kadmon. Both of them are only interested in making music—they want no part of branding, marketing, promotion, or even organizing their tracks. This gives me the opportunity to play producer even to the extent of making their albums, and I’ve modeled their catalogs on a proven success: internet marketing templates. We’ve created a free front end, which brings people into a deeper “back end” catalog of multiple albums and EP’s, all with different price levels.

When I explain this to artists, they get frustrated...and they should. It doesn’t mean they’re immature or something: it really does suck. Your first album is only the first step towards being profitable. You need to release multiple projects before you start seeing sustainable money from your music. I know this from my own career, but I’m also kind of a dipshit, so check out Terry McBride of Nettwerk:

We’ve found in the digital space, that you will sell anywhere between 25% to 50% of your volume from your catalog upon release of any new albums. So you are layering intellectual property. In the digital space, where you don’t need to buy shelf space, if you create the right metadata behind what you’re doing, and market it in an effective way—you’re not marketing the new album, you’re marketing the brand. By the time you make it to album three, you are selling as much of the catalog as the new album, but you don’t have the cost with the catalog and everything starts to make sense.

Source: Terry McBride on Building Music Brands

3. Minimize the Bullshit. If I signed a new artist to World Around Records right now, I would immediately gut their myspace and pack it full of links to Bandcamp. I would skip the Facebook page, because I don’t think that really becomes useful until your fanbase is in the 4 figure range and you’re actively playing shows. I would make Bandcamp the central destination, and use it to push an EP. We would make that EP available for “free” in exchange for an email address, and we’d also offer a paid download with multiple bonus tracks, generally in the $3 to $5 dollar range. Bandcamp is easy to set up, customizable, and best of all they will dump payment money directly into the artists’ Paypal account, with zero calculation or effort on my part.

Let’s be honest: this social networking is mostly boring bullshit, and we need to minimize the time we spend on it. Everyone will always be hyping new services and sites, but very few of them are truly useful enough to justify using them. For instance, unless the artist was online every day and comfortable using it, I’d never set them up a Twitter account. It’s better to have empty channels than to do a half-assed job on several dozen channels.

The Last Word: Wendy Day

Wendy Day is the truth. There is nobody in this business I would recommend listening to more. She has seen everything, and if you’re reading Audible Hype but don’t know who she is...get familiar ASAP. Start here:

Source: The Day Report

“Imagine if you will, that there are over 50,000 people who want to be rappers, 100,000 people who want to be producers, and another 25,000 who want to be singers. Half of them have enough talent to get past the first year. Of those remaining, 25% have the work ethic to continue past the second year struggling to get on. Of those remaining, 1% have the charisma to be a star, and half of those are willing to do whatever it takes to win—that’s called passion.

Let’s say you are in that Top Half of 1%...here’s what you are competing with:

Of the 4 major labels (Universal, WEA, Sony/BMG, Capitol—and is Virgin even doing anything in urban music anymore?) and the additional 4 or 5 “incubators and indies” that are really doing anything worthwhile, they can only distribute MAYBE 40 to 60 acts a year, and that includes artists who are already signed. Signed artists who’ve already sold a lot of CDs will always be the priority projects because they’re proven entities—the risk is reduced. This is a business, after all.

Of those 40 or 60 acts, if you are a new producer trying to get into the music business, that’s only 400 to 800 songs. I have over 5,000 producers in my data base. There’s just not that much work out here! You’re really gonna have to stand out.

My point isn’t to depress you or to try and stop you from wanting to live your dream. My point is the opposite! To win, you have to stand out from everyone else. You have to work harder, be smarter, have better knowledge, better connections, access to people who can and want to help you, have a better team, and maybe, just maybe, even have a little more talent than everyone else. And you damn well better have the charisma to be a star. And you better continue to work harder than everyone else because the day that you stop grinding, along comes someone else a little hungrier to take your place.”

Audible Hype in Action: DJMSP.com

2009-07-06T23:16:00Z

I love it when readers call me on my bullshit. 9 months ago, I was writing “authority” articles on how to make a music promo blog, and the examples I was giving really sucked. So I’m re-visiting this topic because now I have an example that frankly kicks ass. This is lateral thinking in action—building community and organizing knowledge instead of just broadcasting “BUY ME” around the clock.

A few months ago, we launched DJMSP.com—a promotional site for a World Around Records artist with the awesomely unfortunate name of DJ Multiple Sex Partners. That’s definitely an attention grabber, but it doesn’t pass what domain geeks and ad gurus call The Phone Test: easy & obvious word of mouth repeatability. If you meet someone in a bar tonight and tell them the name of your website, will they be able to find it later?

For instance, “amazon dot com” is a lot easier to remember than “myspace dot com slash autotune hustle apocalypse all one word.” Registering and hosting your website with a .com domain is always a good idea. Keeping your domain name under 8 characters is usually a good idea. Remember, humans are primates with a limited capacity for awareness and thinking. Make it easy on them.

Lateral Thinking: Promote Everyone Else

This is Audible Hype put into practice: right now, there’s not much actual music being pushed on DJMSP.com—mostly articles about hip hop production and sample packs. (The sample packs are .zip folders of .wav loops and sounds with an accompanying .txt file about the site and the label. We use .zip instead of .rar because zip files are more broadly compatible—never piss off mac users.)

The main product of DJMSP.com is interviews with other producers. Not getting keyword clusters for SEO rank—crafting truly useful and fundamentally kick-ass content about the art and science behind hip hop production. This means getting original interviews with up and coming talents, and making “Best Of” compilations drawn from dozens of other interviews with legendary veterans like Pete Rock or Just Blaze. Either way, the focus is on getting truly useful information instead of just personal details or hype for their upcoming project. The brand identity here is education.

The 10,000 Details

The blog is a custom CMS that Charles Choiniere built in Django. This means I’ve got a “control panel” back end, just like Wordpress or Blogger, where I enter all the content and make edits. What I can’t do is make alterations to the site’s template, but that’s deliberate. (Generally, the most useful lessons I’ve learned have been about my own bad habits and limitations. Now I can design systems to “idiot-proof” my workflow, which is important because I am frequently an idiot. Not that I’d ever suggest the same is true for you.)

Why didn’t we use WordPress? First and foremost, because I’m lucky enough to have a silent partner programming genius, so we didn’t have to. This is more than just showing off, though: we’re also building (and testing) a template for artist website/blogs. Once we get our template tightened up, we’re going to start offering it to other artists.

And Finally, Meta-Meta

My more cynical and insightful readers, like a certain Matt from New Zealand, have already noticed that this entire article is a big advertisement posing as a tutorial. He’s right, too. Think about it: that’s the biggest reason I write up instructional content like this.

Here’s my radical, earth-shattering, totally genius logic: the people who like to learn this stuff? They’re the mammals who will emerge at the top of the food chain in the next 5 years. Since that’s the wolfpack I’d prefer to be hunting with, I figure talking openly about everything is in my self-interest. I’m right, too.

Open Questions

Are there aspects of creating the site you want to know about, but I didn’t cover here? I was aiming for short + simple instead of my usual encyclopedia posts. Leave a comment, drop your question, and I’ll be happy to answer you.

An Interview with Paul “Nasa” Loverro from Uncommon Records

2009-06-27T16:24:00Z

What are the most important legal milestones for someone looking to start their own label in 2009? What bases need to get covered ASAP?

Paul Loverro: The first thing you need to do is craft a contract for the artists you will be working with. The contract needs represent the way you want to conduct business as a company and as a person. I would suggest crafting a short, concise document. Our contracts at Uncommon are only 2 pages long for example. I had the advantage of signing a contract back in the days, so I was able to look at that contract and use it as a template for mine. I got rid of what I didn’t like, and added what I wanted in there, but it taught me the flow and verbage of how contracts should read.

I would also suggest not writing a document that is an imitation of what you think a contract should read like. That’s amateurish. If you don’t know, do the research, don’t “play label”. Keep it simple, don’t go overboard.

Our contracts are very simple. We sign projects, not artists. An artist signs over the particular album that we are releasing for a certain amount of time, they don’t “owe us” x amount of records and our contracts are not exclusive. We allow artists to put out other records by themselves or with other labels, only the Uncommon record has exclusivity. A lot of times that exclusivity is only in the digital realm too, so they can press CDs and sell as they like. All profit, post-recoupment, is split 50/50. I don’t think we can be much more fair then that.

I started this label to help artists, not hinder them. That’s my business model and it’s represented in our contracts, every label should start there when creating their foundation of how they will be going forward.

What’s the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned from running your own operation with Uncommon Records?

Paul Loverro: That’s a tough one, because there have been so many lessons it’s hard to determine which one was the most unexpected. I guess it’s getting over the fact that your music being dope really has no effect whatsoever on how successful you are. I always knew that making a successful label and career took a blend of talent, luck, money and contacts—but I had no idea that talent ranks a very distant 4th in that equation.

Do you have a template for planning future releases, or does each project come with unique demands and opportunities?

Paul Loverro: I think over time you try to get a template of how you want to do things exactly with releases but that’s not always the easiest thing to do, or the smartest.

Addressing the “easiest” part first, when your a label like Uncommon, it’s basically a one man operation. I have some heads that help me out, but really it’s me at the controls for almost everything. That goes for planning releases, A & R-ing releases, booking shows, doing press and radio promotion, recording and producing music, managing the website and managing all the online promotion (ie. Youtube, Myspace, Twitter, blogs, etc). That sort of arrangement creates peaks and valleys based on time demands. So I can’t easily sit and say, “OK, we’re gonna put out an album every 3 months”. I’d like to sit down and do that, but it’s not feasible all the time. As this company grows I hope to add people to the staff starting as interns (hint, hint—send resumes!).

As far as it being the “smartest” thing to have a template for putting out records? That’s not always the best thing. Each project may appeal to a slightly different audience and each artist is an individual with unique expectations and goals. You have to treat records like babies, they breath and have a life of their own. Sometimes the level of “success” or coverage something gets is completely out of your control.

The second part of that nowadays is that as an artist you have to be putting the work in now for yourself and not depend on a label to every last thing for you. It’s a team effort or a collaborative effort. Artist coming to Uncommon, I think understand, that they have a record that they want to get out to as many people as they can. Thus, they want to do shows, promote on the internet on the various forms of social media, they might have their own blog or merch store. Artists really need to build their own “empires,” then bring that to a label like Uncommon which bolster that empire further. We’ve got our own kingdom here with a base of people that support us. We add credibility to artists no matter how established they may be or not be. The hope is that someone says “Wow, Artist X is doing something on Uncommon” and their just as excited about the artist being on our label as they are that our label is doing something with that artist because they are familiar with us both. It’s power in numbers, if you don’t get that that’s the way it works in 2009, I think your lost.

All of that feeds into why labels have gotten a lot looser with their “template” for releases. I think publicists (thank God) also have a lot less input on release schedules nowadays too because they carry less weight with the print media and terrestrial radio industries fading as they are.

You’re running a successful and growing operation on youtube—how do you keep that organized? What makes for good video content, in your opinion?

Paul Loverro: Thanks, I think You Tube should be part of any indie label’s promotional effort. These days video is crucial to keep people’s eyes on you when they are online. It’s also very easy to flood You Tube on a budget.

I would suggest anyone reading this get a Flip Mino video recorder. It’s only about a 100 dollar investment and is the best way to record live performances to post online on a budget. It is a handheld (size of a cell phone) camera. It has one big red button on it that records, it’s idiot proof. Aim it at the stage and there you have a video that can sit online promoting you for all times. It “flips” out a USB port that you plug into any computer and it can post video with one click to Youtube or Myspace Video straight from the interface it comes with. Not everyone is going to be able to come and see you in your town live. Fans that aren’t living near you can really get a kick out of videos of you rocking, this is a global game now. Besides, people near you that can come see you may get more motivated to come the next time if they see what they missed the last time. Even if it’s low quality, who cares? It’s something.

I also found this website called One True Media. They have video editing tools that you can use from their website, so you don’t have to own an expensive video editing program. It’s like $3.99 a month to use their more premium tools and you can post straight to Youtube from the site. I’ve done “video flyers” for some of our big shows on there and promotions for upcoming releases. You can mix in slide show pics as well and add music beds. It’s really simple, it’s grimey, but that’s not really a bad thing for us.

Those are 2 incredibly cheap ways to get your You Tube operation popping and that is really huge. We’re about to launch a brand new website at uncommonmusic.net and we’re featuring a Livestream player as a main feature of it. Livestream is the next level of video integration, it lets you make playlists out of your uploaded or favorite videos on You Tube, it also lets you load video straight to it’s site or broadcast live from your webcam. There’s also a chat room in the widget where people can comment on videos. It’s pretty sick. It’s also free, because they run banner ads at the bottom of your videos, much like You Tube now does. The interface they have is like running a real TV Station, a must try and must see.

Video is huge online, you can’t have a site without video integration of some sort anymore. We went from having a few random videos to having a giant You Tube page and now a dynamic video player on the new site in a couple of months, with almost no money and I know it’s made a difference in hits back to the website and awareness of what we do generally online.

One of the most frequent questions I get these days is about being a recording engineer. How did you get prepared for that career? Also...was it an enjoyable job?

Paul Loverro: It’s funny you ask that, it’s actually something I’d like to get back in to as my day job. When I got to a point in High School where I was forced to “choose a career path” this is what I chose. I loved music, had a whopping 66 Average and my folks had next to no money for any college. I went to a school called the Institute of Audio Research in Manhattan. Those were some of the most fun years in my life. It was around that time that the underground scene was really taking root, circa 1997 and I had just met the woman that would be my wife.

When I graduated school, I started interning in what I would now define as a “demo studio”, we charged people about 15 bucks an hour and advertised in the Village Voice in the classifieds. That’s how it was done back then. There was a lot of opportunity for jobs, especially PT. The studio scene in New York has changed a lot since then, with the advent of home recording.

I ended up at Ozone Music where I met all my favorite underground emcees of that era from when I was in school and started to build up my credits—when Ozone shut it’s doors I was picked to run Definitive Jux’s fledgling studio. At a certain point, Jux no longer needed a full time studio and I was let go. At that point, I went back to school for broadcasting, which is fine, but just not the same. I’m working (luckily) in that field now, but I want to get back into working with musicians again full time and am about to start working at venues doing live sound, I have a studio that hopefully some work will start spilling into the more I get back out there (hint, hint).

That’s one story on how I ended up in Recording Engineering, got out & want back in. Hopefully, that helps anyone about to chose that career. Schooling of some sort, I think is vital. You need to know electronics and the acoustics of sound to really do this right. If you don’t know what the numbers mean on your eqs and compressors and what they actually do, your not really mixing, your just thumbing around. With Recording Engineering there is a lot you have to be
taught and basically forget in order to fully understand something else that you use every day.

Does it make sense for small labels to pay for Soundscan numbers? Do you think that’s a necessary step?

Paul Loverro: No, absolutely not. I think it costs several hundred dollars for that access, who really gives a damn? If you’re a small label, the CDs are in your crib, you can see what your doing. They’re either there or they’re not, you know? As a small label, your number one concern should be “am I making a quality product?” That goes to the music itself, the mix down of it, the packaging and artwork, the hype you can build for it. If you press a CD and are tracking Soundscan everyday waiting to see the numbers jump- I don’t know what to tell you. Soundscan in this environment has been replaced by your Web Site hits, those numbers mean more to you then anything else really as far as sales.

I know you’re not exactly a fan of Napster or Rhapsody: what’s your take on the digital distribution landscape in 2009?

Paul Loverro: I’ve tried to push our fans toward services like Itunes, Emusic and Amazon because the pay scale is far better for artists and labels. Here’s the problem with Napster and Rhapsody and even a store like the Zune Marketplace:

Payment first—they essentially charge the listener a fee per month to have access to pretty much their entire library. The listener “streams” songs from the company. The company then only pays you per stream or listen. That’s like 3 cents a listen. I think we see the problem here. It’s almost pointless. If all music was distributed this way, I don’t think there would be any music being released independently. Companies like Rhapsody walk away with 10 bucks a month or whatever they charge and give the artist next to nothing. In the meantime, the customer doesn’t even really have your track, at least in a more tangible form. They listen to more and attach to less.

Culturally—you can see where I’m going with this. What services like this say is “people that steal music through illegal means need to be satisfied in a way they can understand, they need to be brought into a payment fold that they can handle”. It’s almost like music outsourcing. The illegal downloaders driving down the price to the point where it almost makes no sense to charge people for your music. Fuck that. I work hard, we all work hard, we deserve something for our work. If we choose to drop something free to support our fans and spread the word, that’s on us—not you motherfuckers out there. And that extends to Rhapsody and Napster all these sorts of “pay for share” services.

The whole thing just cheapens the worth of a song for another generation.

I feel like nowadays there are a lot of powerful blogs, magazines and music think tanks that are run by people that grew up on the original illegal Napster. They saw the illegal Napster and the ensuing court cases as a struggle for “Freedom” or something. They want to sit at a round table and decide how those “musicians” can make money in some new way so that they can continue to get an ocean’s worth of music for a pittance. Fuck that. Online folks need to stop saying things like “well, musicians just need to tour more and make money on merch”. These are people that haven’t even been to shows lately themselves and probably haven’t played a note in their lives. Musicians must tour (or do shows locally or reginonally). That’s part of the art and how you spread the word and collect fans. This is a basic, but to say that’s the ONLY way that we should be getting paid is lunacy. Would they do that? I think not.

The same people rally hard about how much they want the majors to fall. To me it sounds like they are so busy trying to cause the majors to fail that they don’t realize they are in the process of setting up an all-new uneven and unbalanced system for artists.

Ahh, I can go on all day on this man. Got into a tangent, hope I answered your original question (laughs).

One last question: Who’s doing it right these days? What labels, managers, and artists do you think young, hungry cats should be studying up on and learning from?

Paul Loverro: That’s the golden question. On one hand it’s unanswerable. No one knows, the business in total flux. The death of the CD can not come fast enough in my opinion and until that happens we will all be running in different directions trying to make something happen. The media is in flux too, the old print media is on the way out and also dying a slow death. At the same time, as we just talked about, we don’t have a perfect system for selling music set up online and if you’ve surfed the net and read blogs/social media you know that’s not the end result of what online media will look like either. I also refuse to count anyone in this conversation that has a big budget publicity company behind them or stacks of dough of their own.

With that said, I won’t leave you hanging. The game I respect right now is that of Homeboy Sandman. This dude does shows all the time NYC, he rocked “Yule Prog” for Uncommon in 2008. His sets are original, his music is really like nothing else that’s going on. He’s got a track called “Lighning Bolt” which is both progressive and hilarious at the same time which is really hard to pull off. His sets feature him rapping over just the crowd clapping and him dropping verses over intros to Muse songs. The guys got talent, but to go with that, he promotes online all the time—he has mad videos on Youtube made on a budget, and seems to be good at pollying with other cats that get behind his music and do some promotion for him. I give him the title of “doing it right” right now.

The Presence - Hermit Kingdom

Finally, here’s an example of making low-budget work in a high-concept way: the latest video from Uncommon artists The Presence, detailing the situation in North Korea. Hip hop as Edutainment is in the DNA thanks to acts like Poor Righteous Teachers and of course KRS One—here’s how it looks in 09:

Brzowski: Blazing Your Own Trail

2009-05-27T23:38:00Z

What’s worked for you in 2008, in terms of promotion and marketing? What tools, websites and software have been helping you keep organized and spread the message?

Making interesting music is the most important component.

Beyond that, hard work in terms of bringing your music to the people where they live. Websites like myspace,facebook, and message boards can be helpful, but they are no substitution for hand-to hand flyering and touring.

For face-to-face flyering, what works for you? What’s the best approach, and what kind of mistakes have you learned to avoid?

Well, the first thing in a local sense is to hit whom you know. From there, they will bring their friends who may not be familiar with you, simply on the strength. Some people use flyers as an an excuse to talk to girls, which is fine, but to be real, you may get a date but not make a fan.

Hit up people with similar street hustle when traveling to ensure that you will at least have the core audience of someone musically related to you present.

How do you get mentally prepared for shows these days? Is there any kind of ritual or system to that?

My ritual is hyper-activity.

A level of irritability pervades before shows; running around the club, adjusting the set list to fit time-slot and mood, making calls, networking, making nice with the soundperson. All the while taking the time to talk to fans and friends in the area and be sure they are having a good time. After all, the music may be dark and the mood heavy, but hell, we are hanging out in a bar on a Wednesday, so let’s make this a party.

What advice would you have for first-timers in terms of booking gigs, being prepared, and delivering the goods? What are the most common mistakes you see other cats making?

1. Listen to people’s music before you holler at them about a show. Fans of Jadakiss don’t want to book Swordplay. (Swordy would never be guilty of this, I’m just using his name for realistic coloring)

2. After some years in the game, you allowed to say no to “opportunities” that, in fact, are not truly furthering your master plan.

3. Just because you can make $4000 in your city does not mean fans anywhere else have heard of you. Be modest when asking guarantees unless you are touring with Guns N Roses or the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis. This does not mean undercut yourself either, just be sympathetic to both sides when negotiating.

4. ...and never,ever, hit me up on the interweb and ask me to check your beats for sale if i don’t have a working relationship with you personally. Your beats are probably trash if you have to whore them to people you don’t know. Fuck your presets.

You’ve got a reputation for killing it onstage. Would you say live shows are the core of your gameplan or just one octopus arm?

Live shows are the best way to prove to your audience that you are indeed worth their money.

The other “arms” are always in the process of becoming: new albums, growing a name in multiple markets at once, etc. Right now I’m looking around at who is interested in my next album and can put some financial heft behind it. After 3 years of writing and revising, I’m not going to hand over my creative offspring to just anybody.

Right now Delusional Records and Milled Pavement are talking about dropping it collaboratively, and its smelling pretty good, as those folks are like family.

Now that you’ve gotten a number of projects completed, what kind of changes have you made to how you prepare for new albums now? What are the hidden details you’ve learned to plan for?

The most important thing personally, is to work quickly, but not call something finished before you are happy with it. My time is finite (I work 50 hours at shit jobs to live in a hellhole in a newly gentrified city), so I have to take advantage of every free moment I have. When you release a project, you will not be present to personally prop it up, as opposed to a live performance. You have to be able to step away and know that your work will stand on its own.

Insofar as hidden details, just tack on an extra 2 months to your initial deadline, especially when other collaborators are involved. Nobody takes your art as seriously as you do. This goes for press/radio/vendors as well.

How do you balance collaborations and networking without over-extending or exhausting yourself? Is there a conscious strategy or is it an unspoken martial art?

Man, it’s been a blur the past two years trying to strike a homeostasis between homelife/dayjob/commitments and the torrent of work to be done by a serious d.i.y. artist.

I still have not stuck it quite right. Its a challenge to go from Music Mode to Job Mode, to Booking Mode, to Relationship Mode and so on. The most important thing is to shut off the phone and computer for a day or 2 each week and just present where you are. I am exhausted perpetually...Dog Tired in the Fast Lane.

Insofar as collabs, I’m always honored to contribute if I know and enjoy the artist. I have collabs with Georg Korg(Russia), Moderskeppet (Sweden), and k-the-i??? all dropping this year on various albums, as well as an ep w/ Monsieur Sai (france). Staying busy.

Do you think the European hip hop scene is more open to collaboration and experimentation than the US these days?

Absolutely. Those folks are always reaching out to other artists for guest spots and collabos, and never really worried about purism...which is truly an an antiquated notion in our current cultural climate. The States still abide by relatively provincial standards set by the artists making good in NY/LA/Chicago/Houston. Check out the new Andrromak album for a perfect example of a release with global reach. At least 5 countries are represented.

Have you experimented with digital distribution services for your music?

I only sell digitally after the physical copies are nearly extinct, and my homies Milled Pavement have a deal with IODA, so I have that covered. I plan to re-press “Blooddrive Vol.2” again before making it available digitally. I am not really interested in digital-only releases, buying or selling. If a friend asks me to contribute to a digi-comp or whatever, I will on the strength, but it is not preferred. I just don’t see that sort of release as legitimate. Any asshole can have a website and release music these days. In the Myspace/Facebook/Serrato/ipod era, it is very difficult to sift through and find who is doing music in a tangible fashion....vs. hobbyists. Respect is due to the dj’s+ fans who still buy music in a physical format.The new album will likely come out digital shortly after the physical, just to move with the times,though thiat will not be my decision this time around. I may sound like a dinosaur, but who wants to leave their mark as a folder of mp3’s? If I had my way, all my releases would be vinyl and cassette only.

Do you handle your own recording and mixing?

I record at home, but all the mixing and mastering is done by the super-villain Agent 8. I am techno-deficient by comparison.

What would you like to see change in the music business over the next 5 years?

Brzowski: I don’t know if my desires about the state of the business are really relevant to voice. I am more interested in being able to achieve a level of sustainability within it.

I would like to see vinyl continue it’s upswing, and relocate Agent 8 to Easy Street.

Eyeris: Getting Ready for the Spotlight

2009-05-11T11:42:00Z

Having been bouncing around the world most of your adult life, what are your favorite scenes for hip hop? What are the common threads that you think makes a scene work and thrive?

Eyeris: Every scene that I’ve been in has its own dope flavor...but I’d have to say New York. At first I was like “where is the hip hop scene at?” But then I realized that there’s so many different scenes with their own styles. Everything from the spoken word, to very underground, to the party scene. It’s amazing to see so many young artists/friends around me coming up, it’s such a great feeling. The second part is kind of tough. There definitely has to be support not only from fans but between the artists. Other than that: strong work ethic, constant flow of different types of events, and organization. Talent is already a given.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned from doing tours and international gigs?

Eyeris: My biggest lesson was that I have to be completely real with everyone, from fans to other artists. When you aren’t real about who you are, it’s almost like it outshines the art that you’re making. Most may not agree with me but I believe that if you’re making music as self expression but can’t be real with yourself and/or others, then what from your music am I supposed to feel? Being away from home really allows you to learn not only about yourself but others around you.

But on a lighter note, I learned that all of the hard work and grinding will eventually be very rewarding. The love for hip hop in Europe is so amazing. We had an all female stage at Hip Hop Kemp in Czech Republic, it is basically like Woodstock for hip hop with about 20,000 in attendance. We wouldn’t have been able to do that festival in the states. We had everyone from Roxanne Shante to Bahamadia, Apani B Fly, Invincible, DJ Shortee, Stacy Epps, Eternia, Yarah Bravo, and more. The support we got over there was so unreal. I was like, “okay, I remember now why I’ve been busting my ass and why I’m gonna continue doin so.”

When was the turning point for you, when you realized you wanted to do this professionally? Did you get organized right away or has it been a more gradual, trial and error kinda process?

Eyeris: I’ve been rapping ever since I was probably like 7 or 8. But growing up in the suburbs I was always told I couldn’t do it and got made fun of. When I moved to Portland at 15 I started dabbling in the scene there and did my first demo when I was 17. But I didn’t really start stepping everything up til I was 18-19 and moved to New York. I met Yarah Bravo out there and from day one she has always believed in me and been pushing me. It has definitely been gradual; started with just writing, to recording, to doing shows, now I’ve been focusing more on the marketing side of things. I dropped my mixtape “Tha Carter .5” last summer for the trial and error reason. I put mad different styles on there to see what people were feeling and just been working from those ideas. People think being an emcee is so easy but there’s so much work in it that they don’t see. This is definitely just the beginning.

You made a damn strong impression on the folks who caught you at SXSW. What advice do you have for up-and-coming cats who are looking to do the same in 2010?

Eyeris: Thank you! At SXSW you really have to put any insecurities or fears aside and just believe in yourself 110%. I was lucky enough to have Miz Metro, a singer from NYC, perform with me and our chemistry was crazy! Music is about self expression and when people see your passion coming out in live performance it really touches them. Interacting with the crowd in every way possible is important because it makes the showcase entertaining for everyone. The most important thing though is to have fun and enjoy yourself. So a few drinks definitely won’t hurt, ha ha.

What’s your favorite technology for staying organized? What kind of tech would you like to see in the future, to make your life easier?

Eyeris: Honestly right now, a NOTEBOOK!!! It sounds so corny, but I’ve had the worst luck with laptops and phones. I’ve gone through about 4 Blackberries; one recently just died on me for no reason, and I lost all my contacts. Luckily, I had written down everyone’s info around January, but that’s still over 3 months of contacts I lost. My MacBook also crashed on me around September.. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE technology. I can’t leave my house without my Blackberry, so tech wise I’d have to say that. But writing everything down works best for me.

In terms of online promotion...what DOESN’T work? What mistakes or wasted efforts have you eliminated in the past 2 years?

Eyeris: I’ve been pretty good with seeing mistakes other people have made and not doing the same. But one of my biggest mistakes I think was whenever I’d record new stuff I would put it up on Myspace right away. I’d have like, 2-3 new tracks up instead of putting one and making people eager to hear more. I’ve definitely learned from that. You have to keep people thirsty for more.

You’ve been outspoken about preferring a party show to an actual club gig—is that a business move or just a matter of where you’d rather be?

Eyeris: I’ve just started preferring that and definitely will be doing both this summer. I’ve rocked different shows from very large festivals to smaller shows; its like comparing apples to oranges. I’ve realized with parties it is a lot more intimate and the energy is crazy. In New York we have this whole party scene of our generation of artists, DJs, writers, designers, etc and I feel that the best way to connect with my people is going to be that outlet. We’re in a recession, people are on unemployment and not everybody has money to go see a show. I’m not bashing club gigs by any means, I love doing those shows… But I want to connect with my people as much as possible.

Learn More, Read More, and Bump Some Tunes

Great example of humble + hustle, when I asked Eyeris what she wanted to push, she chose a group project: the Hip Hop Howl mixtape, featuring some of the best indie hip hop from the last SXSW festival. (Needless to day, the lineup is pretty damn impressive.) You can get more tracks and get connected with Eyeris on the Myspace.

Objektiv One: “I Seem to Have a System for Everything”

2009-05-08T00:54:00Z

What are the biggest surprise lessons you’ve learned from your time in the trenches selling beats?

Objektiv One: Emcees are lazy. Not all of them, but 90% of them are. Coming from a music background where you tour for months on end, split money between many people ($100 between 5 people, and van expenses = $0 for you), and all pull your share emcees seem to be the complete opposite of this. It surprised me to learn all of these dudes who rap about hustling just sit around and play video games and never finish songs ever. I know emcees who have recorded less songs in three years than my band… and thats a full band who has put out vinyl, two releases, and now two splits in under 2 years. Once again not all emcees are like this… the special ones make it worthwhile, but selling beats I don’t pursue much because most people flake on the money or never commit. I started doing instrumentals because I will build my own career with or without them....

What’s your creative process like in 09? Do you approach making beats as The Job, or is it always happy fun time when you get to play with samples?

Objektiv One: The creative process changes depending on what type of track I am making. I usually start with digging. I will dig for almost two months and not even touch a beat. Once I have gathered lots of records I get to work and will not dig until I feel I have exhausted most of those records. For one of my labor intensive instrumentals this sometimes involves 20 records per beat. I usually build multiple patterns on the MPC to get a rough sketch of everything. Once I feel this patterns are complete I then bounce them down and arrange everything in Ableton. Then I will tweak and add synths, vocals, etc to fill the song out. All in all some of the instrumentals take 40 hours with upwards of 40 tracks. As for normal beats, I just dig a hot sample and try to make the dopest 8-16 bar loop I can. Then I will just build a couple patterns and arrange to fit.

Which came first for you: MPC or CSS?

Objektiv One: The CSS actually came first. I have only been making beats for maybe 2 1/2 years and the MPC only came around in the last year. As for web development I am very limited, and lean more towards the design aspect. That is where my specialty lies. However, music and computers have gone hand in hand since I have been pursuing both since the age of 2 or 3.

Do you have a system of organizing samples? So far, nobody who’s been asked that question does.

Objektiv One: I seem to have a system for everything. I am a systematic philosopher and obsessive compulsive. Haha. I organize samples on every level. Everything from the folders on my MPC, to having a spreadsheet that keeps track of every sample I use in a song. I usually organize everything by category as in snares, hihats, kicks, one shots, sfx, etc. Everything has a labeling sytem that follows as well. Snares are SN0001, SN0002, etc. Also, sub categories exist as well.... its actually horrible. I can go on forever. LOL.

Are you a 100% freelance human being right now, or is there a day job somewhere in your life cycle?

Objektiv One: There is a dayjob, but the two weeks was put in recently. So as of June 1st my soul will be free from the cycle of suffering known as the workforce. I have saved enough money to pay my bills for awhile. I am trying to go freelance and live off of design, beats, and assorted hustles. I also will be touring with my band Decades from June 1st-August 7th, which is whole other career in itself.

I also have some albums coming out soon. Most of them free and will be mainly instrumentals. One will be composed entirely in a moving van, one will be completely composed on a Nintendo DS and will be exclusive through Potholes in my Blog, and one will be my full length which will come out later this year (hopefully). Also, stay on the look out for a cartoon I am doing which will have beats, humor, and shennanigans all rolled into one.....

What are you playing for Decades? Does running two music careers feel like a balancing act, or good synergy?

Objektiv One: I play drums for Decades and have been with them for over three years. Two music careers is a balancing act, but because I am involved in both of them as a human I would say it is really one music career with two heads. In fact sometimes I feel it is more than that. I put on so many different hats in hip hop. It feels like a three headed monster because I try to progress my beats for emcees, my instrumentals, and then I do Decades. The synergy is nice though because I have been playing in bands for 10 years now and would miss the camaraderie and the live performance aspect of a whole group as opposed to hip hop where you usually are solo or with one or two others. Not to mention those shows keep my performance chops up for when I start doing live MPC shows....

Please explain the Nintendo DS project. That sounds insane.

Objektiv One: All I can say about the DS project is it will be titled “NintendoBlap” and will be exclusive to Potholes In My Blog. The methods of the project will be revealed when its done through video footage I am keeping during the process.

The basis of the project though is it will be completely composed and arranged on a NintendoDSi in a moving van while I am on tour. It will be an instrumental hip hop collage and might even include some guest appearances. So far the challenge is that everything must go through the DS. This means if there is vocals they must go through the DS first, if there is synths they must go through the DS first, etc. I will be tracking it on a 4track cassette recorder to hold the final projects. I can say I am using the Korg DS-10, and the DSi with the new record capabilities. The rest must remain secret for now....

Are you a VST head? What are some of your favorite plugins for Ableton Live?

Objektiv One: I am actually not a VST head. I am the complete opposite. I believe that the rapid advance of technology in modern society is destroying a lot of amazing things and is even morphing language and the way people communicate in a negative way. Now don’t get me wrong technology is a great thing, but not at the rate it is progressing… this being said I am currently moving completely away from the computer. I once constructed everything on the computer and now I have moved to the MPC and SP404 for constructing beats and I am arranging and converting on the computer. Eventually I will quit arranging on the computer as well. I think choosing your equipment is a very important factor in your sound and your workflow. Every piece of equipment alters the way you construct beats. The limitations on the older equipment forces creativity because you have less options. On the computer you have so many options you can easily spend 10 hours searching for a synth sound in your 10,000 VST plugins.

That being said the restrictive work flow is where I thrive and I by no means think that people who use computers are not as good of producers. That is just how I have discovered my workflow. I love the sound of old records and I love the challenge the old equipment presents. I want to use older equipment, because I want to keep those methods alive before they collapse under the weight of technology.

Also, I like experimental and odd methods. For instance the DS project is modern technology, but it is unique from Reason, Ableton, ProTools, and Fruity Loops.

Objektiv One’s Home Studio

Akai MPC1000
Roland SP404
Korg MicroKorg
Alesis Micron
Nord Lead 2X
Presonuse Firepod
Technics 1200 MK2
Vintage Sansui QS500
Lots of records

Scroll talks Artist Management, MPC Performance, and Booking Hip Hop

2009-05-04T18:08:00Z

What’s worked for you in 2008 in terms of marketing and promo? What kind of tools and tech have helped you stay organized lately?

Scroll: Well I guess first off, some more money to throw towards marketing could have helped out in 08. The longer I do this, the more I realize everything is about your market (in general) and then your marketing. But I guess the Internet has become the best tool I have at this point. Its very easy to contact all the man-children you know now scattered about, and coordinate various things. I do pretty much everything, from graphic design to booking with the ol’ laptop. With the upcoming releases, and a full time job, its looking like I’ll be turning towards management this year, but I’m still waiting to see where the albums go, I guess.

What got you interested in pursuing management? Did you discover a natural talent or is it based on traumatic experiences?

Scroll: Yeah, the management thing has just come over years of writing e-mails, returning e-mails and haggling over guarantee’s, and lots of flyers and postering, etc. It has just come to the point that, I’m sure there’s someone better than me at it, and I just don’t have time. For the first time I’m looking at label interest, and with a job, I need to work, then do music. The time just is not there, to try to put the PR in as well.

I think its a logical move for artists who want to just do music. Your putting in countless unpaid hours, might as well pay someone to do the work, and focus more on the real “art at hand” if you will. And at some point if you get enough notoriety, or an upstanding label, management will follow, it’s just part of how it works. Maybe you’ll have to pay at first, maybe you’ll have a product that someone thinks is worth working for, aiming for the long run deal.

Big venues will not even accept press material from non affiliated acts anymore. Meaning you want to open a show at the House of Blues with no management? Go fuck yourself. Makes one reconsider, either bombing clear channel and live nation or....find some fucker with an agency backing him.

Scroll live hip hop onstage” width="500" height="375" />

Why do you think there’s still such a leadership vacuum in underground hip hop? Do you see any movement towards an artists union or at least an “industry blacklist” of shady promoters, venues, bookings agents, etc?

Scroll: I discovered this recently, and I think understood it in full only in the past year or so...as I probably for the first time, went from “another rapper” to a viable act in the eyes of a lot of venues and promoters. Because of how accessible marketing is (on some level) because of the myspace era, while it is incredible for the everyday guy, it is now impossible to quality control. Venues and promoters are forced to look at acts now as draw, and draw alone.

Thus, if you happen to be “indie hip-hop,” they know that no one will probably like it… and therefore, how many of your friends can you get out? How much can I make off of you feeling like a rock star? Then there’s being able to provide an evening of listen-able music based on actual music not how many of your boys turned out. The direct effect is, the one really good indie hip-hop act, that should be getting out there because of how good they are, has to face the onslaught of genre chains now attached to the pile of bad acts that are now so accessible, and impossible to decipher between.

Not sure I answered this one...just ranted. I think no matter what, it sucks when you rock and the promoter does not give you any cash.

You’ve bounced around the country more than most mammals—what are your favorite local scenes to play shows and stay inspired?

Scroll: As far as scenes go, I guess they all serve their purpose. For me, Boston works out the best, it is large enough to be able to open larger bill / venue events, and also not run into everyone you know...every day. I also like to hide outside cities, and be able to travel in, Mass lets me do that. Hide by the beach, go play shows. Smaller cities like Burlington are great to get your foot in the door, but its very easy to get played out, and seemingly repeat goals you’ve already accomplished...on frequent basis...potentially indefinitely.

New York city is great for trips, not careers in my limited opinion, and for some reason, I just did not like the Portland scene at all. I think its important to live where you’re happy, if you’re good, you’ll find some shows to play, and can always travel anywhere to gig. Scenes are good for support or to build you up, but it also sometimes traps acts...big in a local scene, but that’s it.

Now national scenes are great...like the festival music scene, probably the best way to get your music out there now-a-days. That’s what I think, anyways. Those fuckers love the tunes!

Has working the live sampler sets given you gig opportunities and connections that weren’t available before? Have you been discovering new audiences this way?

Scroll: The live instrumental set has been huge, or sampler, whatever you want to call it. I can really make the set fit almost any bill, be that Hip-Hop or electronica/jammy stuff. Like I said the set is just very listen-able, and due to the fact that its all live, the act holds up as a performance as well. It is so much more to watch than a DJ, although still, a lot of people just don’t know what to make of it. Those who know, and get whats going on...they understand the set on a different level.

As an act though, it opens a lot of doors for venues and bills alike. I’ve been getting my music out to a lot more people for sure...I have hopes that this year will be a big one...although I think I’ve felt that way before.

What are the most common or disastrous mistakes you see cats doing with their live shows?

Well as far as mistakes go, I see a bunch of stuff, but again this is only what I think.

There are people who say all press, all promotion is good. I am not of this mind set, but then again, I’ve been doing this for 8+ years and this is the first year I feel like things are really happening (so what do i know?) With live shows, I guess the first thing is, you should not play every show just because “it’s a show.” Try to play events that work for your genre, I can’t even say how many shows I’ve played where, that weird indie hip-hop acts plays and it throws the whole show. Like the room goes from 200 to 15 people...in 20 mins.

I myself have done that at some point, but I’d like to think I figured it out quick. All music is great for what ever it does for people, not saying you have to be good to make music, do what makes you happy. But, before you go out and play a show, think about, do people really want to hear this? After I go out and hear 15 indie hip-hop acts on one bill, all before 11:00 and the headliner is on at 11:30...most of the time I don’t even make it to the act I went to go see.

People need to be able to listen to your music. I don’t even listen to my first 2 releases, its not that I am not proud of what they are, or think they are good on some level....it’s just not everyday listening music. The indie scene knocks a lot of stuff, while there is some horse shit out there, a lot of music is popular because its marketable...for better or worse. I think acts should think about this a bit more. Maybe I’d stay at shows longer, or go to indie bills a bit more.

As a beatsmith, what’s your creative process these days?

Scroll: My beat process has changed a lot as of late, I went from being entirely sample based and thinking, “who is this beat for?”, to looking at every track as part of a live set. For those who missed my VH1 Behind the Music, I’m pretty much focused on live sampler sets these days. So I’m still using 2 MPC’s but now I’ve thrown a Micro Korg and an old SP-303 into the mix. With this massive pile of out dated shit I have enough room/time to pretty much transition back and forth for as long as the set requires. Another thing which i was apparently missing was that people really like stuff to dance to, so I’ve been trying to split up beats from, technical to catchy, and such, and such. Its a very different process to make beats to play out live.. like a band, vs. stuff you have someone rap to. I still make tracks for people, but its mostly for very specific projects, where as I feel like 5 years ago, I’d make a bunch of beats and just hope that someone wanted them. I feel like I’m one of the only people I meet now that still makes beats on outdated machines...everyone loves the computer programs, I guess I’m just lazy or kind of an idiot.

When it comes to sample sourcing—are you a vinyl purist or more of an omnivore?

Scroll: I am silly picky when it come to vinyl. Honestly, I only really sample solo artists for making beats. I like to compose music band style, I find some drums I might like, then I shoot for a first layer sample, maybe a solo banjo, or cello, guitar, what-have you. Then I go for a bass layer, then another in key instrument. And so forth. I never understood the whole, “well I’ll just take this Bobby Bland sample and put a snare hit over it, and WHAM...got a beat.”

It’s very easy to sample a classic song, the song was great, of course it will sound good if you loop its best 2 bars and put a break over it. Take the time, find the sounds, it’s well worth it. Keyboards always work for filling the missing parts at the end.

Any last words of advice for the young and inexperienced?

Scroll: My advice is this. While trying to book shows, take one method, and it is proven, over many failed gigs. Hit booking agents and venues with this e-mail.

1. What show you wish to support or date.
2. How long you can fill.
3. One sentence about your genre.
4. Where your press & music can be found at.

This is the tried and true e-mail, anything else they hate. When I first started, I remember trying explain shit in e-mails...4 lines, your web address. Works well for getting replies and landing shows.

Godamus Rhyme: “Cats don’t know how hard I work!”

2009-04-21T23:27:00Z

What’s worked for you in 2008, in terms of marketing and promotion? What kind of tech and tools have you been using to stay organized?

Godamus Rhyme: Truthfully, in 2008 I didn’t do much. There was a lot going in my life and the only thing that I really figured out was that my hustle was all wrong. Promotion for myself as an artist was practically non-existent and most of my time was spent in the studio working on projects for other people.

In 2009 I’m changing all that. I’m very national and global in my mindset. I’m really trying to strategize, prioritize and put myself out there more from a musical and promotions standpoint. The internet is naturally my greatest tool. Especially for keeping organized. Right now I’m pimping Gmail extremely hard as well as sites like ArtistData.com, SonicBids, ReverbNation, DivShare and Media Fire. Google Reader is a must for trying to stay up on what’s going on in the Blogosphere. Before I discovered that, I was driving myself nuts trying to remember what blog was where and making a gigantic list of bookmarks on my computer. For actual in hand tech, I depend on my sidekick 3 to keep me connected. I have all my email forwarded there and all my phone numbers in it. I refer to it as my mobile office. I also write a lot of songs and business notes in it.

I’m very particular about what I like, so I am strictly a PC dude and I’m very anti-BlackBerry. I’ll probably switch up my phone to G1 when my contract is up cause there are certain things about the sidekick I’m fed up with at this point.

I’ve caught you live with the mobile destruction unit Caveman Theory and you’ve been on the road for years now. What’s been the biggest surprise lesson from life on the road?

Godamus Rhyme: At home, I’m a very private dude and don’t hang out a lot. I’m either at my J.O., in the lab, or with my girl mostly. But out on the road, I find myself more easygoing. On my last tour dudes who I previously had issues with I ended up getting drunk and having a blast with. The road can be a very freeing place. It can also show completely different sides of people. Some folks who I swore were the coolest ended up turning into complete monsters. I’m not gonna name names, but the ones who were there know.

Just so its officially out there, there is no more Caveman Theory. That got put to rest at the end of 2007. I still mention it from time to time when I write about my personal history, but CMT is gone. I’m strictly a solo act, but I am affiliated with some very dope crews.

What are the most common mistakes you see newer acts making, onstage and on the road?

Godamus Rhyme: The first mistake is thinking that you’re owed something. A lot of cats don’t know how to be humble anymore. I mean… I’m a cocky ass dude. I know my skill level and I make no bones about it on records. But when dealing with people you gotta know when to fall back. I’m extremely thankful for every person who’s ever said “that shit was hot” or “you’re dope” to me. You gotta come in willing to learn and work at building people’s faith in you.

Onstage and the road… Most of these dudes are lame. New and old. Performing is a craft. It’s an art. These dudes don’t put any time into it. They think they can get up there and as long as they got bars, people will respond. NO. You gotta learn movement, banter, crowd control.... How to put a set together. And you have to be honest with yourself about the reactions your material gets or your show will never improve. It’s easier for cats who got a rep. You really don’t have to try as hard if people already know your songs and are into your shit. But as a new artist your show can break you. Especially if you don’t have anything on radio or the blogs or nuthin. All cats got to go by is your stage show.

Considering you wear pretty much every hat in the industry from engineer to emcee, how do you keep balanced when you’re crunched for time?

Godamus Rhyme: Truthfully? I don’t. Most of the time I’m in full panic mode running from one place to another. I have tons of things that need doing and I don’t have a manager, publicist, booking agent or any kind of staff. For me, networking is more important than ever cause anything anybody does for me is based off friendship, mutual respect or favors owed.

I’m blessed enough to work in my field (audio engineering) and made more money than ever off music last year, but nearly all my extra loot was from engineering on the side and production. Now that I’m mostly focusing on me, that cashflow is even more sporadic. I also have a lot of late nights and jam packed days as I try to improve my grind.

For instance, I work at a TV station and right now I’m doing this interview as I’m taping news segments. When I get a break, I’ll head to a computer work station and try put some time into my webdesign/blog shit. I’ll get off a little before midnight, then I gotta go home and get ready for a photoshoot tomorrow morning (monday). I got a show tuesday night, and then I have to be at work at 3AM Wendsday. Then there’s a recording session and radio interview thursday night.

Around all this I’ve got to schedule a meeting with a local promoter I’m friends with to talk about setting up a string of shows for a band I’m trying to help tour this summer and find time to sit down and start the next few beats for an EP I’m doing that’s dropping in June and record a track for a producer up in Massachussets. I also have to design and order flyers & posters for my mixtape release party I’m throwing next month.

Did I mention I work fulltime and the only one of those activities I am ever fast at is recording vocals? Cats don’t know how hard I work.

Did you go to school for sound design and engineering or are you self taught?

Godamus Rhyme: Both. I started out recording myself and one of my best friends in high school. Convinced my mom to buy me a 4-track one christmas and never looked back. By senior year I knew I wanted audio engineering to be my day job if music never popped off.

I got a full academic scholarship to Hampton University and majored in Music Technology, but the program sucked. There was a whole lot of traditional music theory and instrument/voice lessons which I can now appreciate, but none of the technical shit I really wanted to learn. You didn’t get into that until your third year. I learned more about making and recording music fucking around in Cool Edit and Sonar in my dorm room or at my homie Dane’s apartment. After two years of being miserable I left, went home, and convinced my parents to help me go to Full Sail, which is where I had really wanted to go the whole time.

Full Sail let me get my hands on some of the best industry level equipment and helped expand and refine the foundation I built for myself during highschool and those 2 years at Hampton. I learned alot of tips and tricks from hit-making engineers and producers. But I’m still learning new shit all the time. I always want to get better.

Now that you’ve got a few finished projects under your belt, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about planning an album or EP?

#1. There is no one way to make an album.

#2. Mastering engineers are your best friend, but a shitty mix is a shitty mix. If your mixing engineer is retarded, get a new one. I don’t care if he’s free and your best friend. Your record will sound like shit and no one will listen.

#3. Quality is way more important than quantity in a tracklisting.

#4. I make better music when I have a definate goal in mind.

#5. Every artist works differently. As an engineer and producer, you have to adapt and be flexible.

Finally: do you have any standout book recommendations, in terms of doing music professionally or just business in general, that have proven valuable to your career?

All You Need to Know About the Music Business, by Donald Passman.

I think that book is the single most valuable resource any musician can have when they’re first thinking about getting into this business. The author is a former entertainment lawyer and the book is revised and updated every year. It goes in depth into different types of deals, contracts, building a team, publishing, etc. If there’s something you might need to know about the industry, it’s in there.

I learned a hell of a lot from that book. This game is filthy and everybody’s looking out for themselves, so it pays to be knowledgeable. Read that and you’ll be at least somewhat prepared for 75% of the dumb shit that happens in this biz.

10 Highly Effective Ways to Market like an Asshole

2009-03-25T17:52:00Z

I am not a hater. I would like to thank the Universe for the challenges and opportunities, and I would like to thank the people who made this article possible. I didn’t write this: dozens of anonymous correspondents, most of whom I’m dealing with the for the first time, wrote this for me. Without your shining example of Prime Stupid, I would have had to make this shit up and that’s hard work for any writer.

And as always, to the critics: I agree with you, you’re completely right, please, keep doing what you’re doing exactly how you’ve been doing it.

1. Comment and message spam.

The best part about the music business isn’t the music—it’s the unintentional humor. Like when people talk about their “Myspace marketing plan,” I always get a huge kick out of that one. I have a Myspace marketing plan, too, and although I’ve been making good money licensing it to Universal and Def Jam, I’m willing to share it for free here on Audible Hype:

Yo, [generic greeting]. I like what I hear! We’re [insert name] an up-and-coming artist and we just [meaningless local achievement]!!! Check out our mixtape, this shit is hot right now, featuring [famous artists we’re stealing a track from] and [dude you’ve never heard of] and [insert name]. Check out [album name] dropping [release date] on [your label] presented by [drug dealer friend who actually paid for this].

Except...quantity is no replacement for quality. No matter how many times you post your spam comments, it’s still a net loss.

This is even more true for email. It seems sensible that you should send out as many promotional emails to as many people as possible, but in reality, that just means you’re pissing off more people and working hard to make sure people have bad associations with your name. Just because I sent you an email doesn’t mean I want to be on your promo list. Just because I’m on the promo list of someone you know doesn’t mean I want to be included on yours. The foundation of any working, effective email promo campaign is this: respect your audience’s intelligence, their privacy and their attention span.

BONUS INSIGHT: TYPING IN CAPS LOCK DOESN’T ACTUALLY MAKE YOU ANY LOUDER, HOMEY!!!

2. Mass invitations to social networks and membership sites.

This is a tricky one. What I’m trying to say might go over the heads of the audience that actually needs to hear this, so should I actually include it? Let’s give it a shot…

My point is this: the future of social networks is in aggregation, not innovation. Social Network systems theory is pretty solid now, folks: you have a profile, you connect to other profiles, you communicate. You decide which prisoners you want to deal with, and you get to decorate your cell however you like. And if someone is already doing that, you’ll be hard pressed to sell them with a sales pitch of “come do that same thing over again, somewhere else.”

This leads directly into the next dipshit move…

3. Creating Your Own Social Network.

Bottom line: if you announce the launch of your new social network, how many of your fans will sign up in the first week? If the answer is less than 1000, you’re out of your mind type stupid. If it’s less than 10,000, you’re still just wasting your time. If you are trying to build a fanbase with a new social network, you’re missing the point.

Contrary to what we see on TV, mostly in beer ads, you don’t make a dope party happen by pulling in attractive, well-dressed people off the streets. I’ve tried that many times—not only does it not work but some of them will make a lot of noise about “unlawful restraint” and “kidnapping.”

Nah, you make a dope party happen by knowing a large, mutual network of dope people who like to party and inviting them in advance. You make sure you incentivize it by offering something awesome—my suggestion to promoters: FREE WHISKEY NIGHT—and you advertise. (The second you pull it off, you book the sequel, start a website, and hire someone to make a better logo.)

You build a fanbase on existing social networks. If you’ve got 10,000 friends on myspace, that probably reflects about 2 - 3 thousand actual fans. Keep using myspace. (If you didn’t hear about this, Facebook is actually larger and faster-growing than myspace, which is rotting from the inside thanks to pop-up ads and shitty code and database architecture.)

4. Getting Angry at Media For Not Promoting You.

I seriously got this email:

I don’t know why I’m even bothering, but for real you need some clarity about where you stand. You talk the talk about hip hop and promotion and supporting the Underground but we been out here longer than you dog point blank, grinding putting out mixtapes, doing the free music thing, and you’re interviewing clowns like Icon cuz the white kids like him and cuz he knocked the fuck out of Copywrite and that’s it. You’re just chasing celebrities like anyone else.

It goes on, obviously, but the really remarkable thing about this email was the context: it was from someone who has never contacted me before. My general policy is to chalk up all hate mail to good people having bad days, and I’m sure this dude was no exception. Still, I’m not interested in interviewing him and I’m not even gonna name the dude here.

Remember: nobody anywhere owes you anything. (Not even “the white kids.")

5. Make Deals With Anything That Moves

Here’s another real-life example:

I WANT TO GET AT YOU ABOUT CO-BRANDING WITH YOUR SITES I LIKE YOUR STYLE AND WE GOT THAT AUDIENCE THAT YOU WANT. I REPRESENT [like I’d put you on] CLOTHING AND WE SHOULD BE HAVING A CONVERSATION!!!

*We offer 25% for affiliate sales and we offer full online support and digital distribution to music artists

The list goes on, but the funniest part about this message was the link he provided to learn more about their “digital distribution”—yeah, I was curious enough to click it—and it turned out to be his personal eBay account. Audible Hype is interested in doing interviews with anyone in the business who’s willing to talk details, but I’m not going to waste anyone’s time selling clothing, or energy drinks (actual offer), or your anti-drug breakdancing musical (sad but true).

6. Begging vs. Networking

My name is Justin Boland, I’m 27 and despite having a large digital footprint, I’ve got very little real-world power. For no money, I provide publicity to artists who I think are creating dope and meaningful music—like The Loyalists, Stink Tank, That Handsome Devil, S. Maharba, Witness, The Aztext, or Inverse. All those people are very diverse, but they’ve got two things in common.

First, they all make really damn good music. Second, none of them ask me for it. None of them expect me to help—because they’re already working hard and taking full responsibility for their own hustle.

In closing, here’s a simple question: is J. Dilla famous for his promotion and marketing, or his music? Which do you think he spent his time on? Building a solid foundation that attracts talented and powerful people is the original zero-maintenance networking plan.

7. Email Fellatio

I’m guessing this is true for most people, based on personal experience: most of us get uncomfortable when they’re getting praised. Although I feel like we’re pretty much kicking ass with the World-Around Records project, I’m also very aware of the fact we’re learning through full-contact trial and error. (We’re fortunate enough to have really dedicated, unusually artistic and intelligent fans.) Remember, Audible Hype is a learning process, not a set of answers. I don’t take this nearly as seriously as Andrew Dubber or Steve Gordon, and treating me like a guru will only tempt me to fuck with you.

8. Too Much Literature: or, Don’t Hand Me a Bible

If I’m just asking you a simple question, and you give me 3 pages worth of cut’n’paste html promotional code, I just overdosed on your bullshit. There are biological limits to how much any human being can take in. Honestly, three paragraphs is almost too much.

How your group formed is irrelevant. Who you’ve worked with in the past doesn’t really matter. Your future plans are a fairy tale, just like anyone else’s.

Most of all: a list of who you’ve opened for isn’t as impressive as you think. Getting an opening gig is usually a reflection of your relationships with local club owners and promoters, not actual talent. Those of us who actually do gigs know all too well that 90% of the time, you’re barely even speaking to the headliner. It’s dope that you got free drink tickets, but opening for Immortal Technique really doesn’t imply that he’s down with your crew. He still doesn’t even know you, and he never listened to that CD you handed him, either.

10. Don’t Be This Guy

So real I had to commemorate this for Internets history:

Obvious lesson: don’t fuckin lose your fuckin temper online. It’s just words on a screen, do it with class, do it with style.

11. ...You Tell Me.

I’m sure there’s a couple dozen forms of herd animal behavior I forgot to include here. For the sake of all humanity, please add to this list so that future generations can be slightly less stupid than those who came before them.

More importantly, don’t get too discouraged if you recognized yourself on this list. This is a learning process and we’re all in it together—every single day gives you a prime opportunity to change your ways and start running a smarter, tighter operation.

“The best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago. The second best time is today.”—Chinese Proverb

Lateral Thinking: Stop Promoting Yourself

2008-10-01T16:24:00Z

This article is built around a single insight. The artists I talk to who already have an online footprint and already did everything in the $0 Promotional Plan are facing a new question: What in the hell am I supposed to PUT on my website, blog, facebook and mother-effing twitter account? The nutshell answer: you use your platform to promote your fellow DIY hip hop artists. This is a fundamental win/win situation—you get more content, they get more promotion, and the world is a better place.

The Basic Promotional Template

...we looked at every successful artist. We pored over charts in industry magazines going back decades, looking for commonality. And what we found was that anyone who was successful was not isolated. Besides a couple of one-hit wonders in the ‘60s, every big act was part of a larger movement. The Beatles were by no means by themselves. The British Invasion also meant that you had the Stones, the Kinks, The Who.

So around ‘97 or ‘98, when we went to Geffen, we told them upfront that the only way this was gonna work was if we could be like Noah and bring a bunch of other complementary artists on board with us.

--?uestlove from Indy Week

If you think the music you make is totally unique, allow me give you some valuable advice: stop deluding yourself. You’re just ignorant and you need to do some research and actually pay attention to other hip hop artists. I know that’s hard. I spend so much time working on my own material that it’s usually a pain in the ass to get caught up on new artists, or check out the endless names that random folks recommend to me. This is business, though, and you need to be aware of your competition before they steal your fanbase, your momentum and your lunch.

Fact is, there’s a lot of artists who sound like you and they’ve all got websites and blogs and albums, too. It’s also a safe bet that 99% of them are struggling with the same daily grind, uphill climb bullshit that you are. Everyone is looking for some free promo, some good reviews, some new audience. Give it to them. This is not charity, this is smart strategy.

IMPLEMENT: sit down and make a list of the rappers and hip hop acts you like and respect. Local dudes, cats you’ve done shows with, veterans you look up to. Basically, people you can recommend honestly as quality music. This is your foundation. Up next, we’ll look at an example of how to build on that.

Case Study: Inverse

One of the best examples I’ve seen is LA rappers Inverse. You won’t be able to replicate their recipe, because they’ve already done it perfectly and you will come off as a shameless biter. It’s still worth looking over their formula, though.

Inverse clearly started out by deciding exactly where they wanted to go. They mapped out the larger scene they wanted to become a part of and the news coverage at their blog—Inverse Hip Hop—reflects that map. They offer a LOT of hip hop news, new music and video content, but it’s a very specific style of hip hop they’re covering.

Also notice their “blogroll,” or list of links. They’ve summarized a pretty complete directory of hip hop subculture blogs, and it weighs in at over 100 outbound links. For a focused site like Audible Hype, I keep my links restricted to the best material I can refer people to, but for an artist promotional site like Inverse Hip Hop, this is definitely a sound strategy to put yourself on a lot of radar screens, quickly.

The Logical Extreme: Promote Everyone

I’m working on a book about everything I talk about here on Audible Hype. It’s going to be so good that I’ll give it away for free and still sell many thousands of physical copies. To get my brain organized, I wanted to avoid the trap of repeating myself here on Audible Hype, and approach things more systematically. I’ve created a separate site, DIY hip hop, that’s strictly devoted to outlining everything in FAQ format. In the past year, my thinking has been heavily influenced by The Black Swan, the concept and practice of Information Architecture, and about seven hundred struggling rappers, producers, DJs, and self-styled executives.

Remember: I present myself as charitable because I like to think of myself that way. You could look at this more cynically and say it was inspired by the Dosh Dosh concept of setting up “Funnel Sites” to drive traffic to your main projects. Through that lens, then, DIY Hip Hop is just a marketing plan with a charity mask on—like a religion or a hospital.

THE QUESTIONS SO FAR

How can I get more shows?
How can I make sure I get PAID for gigs?
Should I get a record deal?
What hip hop websites matter?
How do I break into the global hip hop market?
How do I get my music reviewed?
Does radio play still matter?
How do I get on soundscan/billboard charts?

An Open Question to Audible Hype Readers

What do you want to see covered on Audible Hype for the rest of 2008? What questions would you like to see covered in the DIY Hip Hop FAQ? Why isn’t there a community for hip hop entrepreneurs and artists to talk shop and teach one another, instead of posing, fronting and talking shit? I have a lot of questions, and I’m sure you do, too.

LET A MAMMAL KNOW.

Weekend Brainfood, September 20th 2008

2008-09-20T19:03:00Z

Fronting: The Original Business Plan

I’ve drafted seven business plans in 27 years on this planet. Then again, Jeff Bezos did a business plan once, and I think that worked out okay for him.

See, a business plan only works when it’s full of relevant details and devoid of bullshit. And even then, it only works with enough capital behind it, and unfortunately for broke rappers around the world, “capital” means cash money dollars.

Success culture is mentally ill. I’m not saying there’s nothing useful and effective in your Tony Robbins books, but I am saying that the real lesson behind “fake it until you make it” is that most of the people we percieve as successful are full of shit. “Think positive thoughts” is good for exactly 30 minutes to work your way out of depression and frustration. If you take it further than that, you’re not being positive, you’re deliberately misleading yourself.

I’m working fulltime these days on launching a music business but I’m not kidding myself about being an executive. When someone whose website is a myspace page hands me a business card, I can only chuckle. In any given city, there’s a thousand promoters, yet only three to five people actually booking all the shows. Crate Kings, one of the best hip hop production sites I’ve come across, dropped a great breakdown on the subject this week:

Calling Yourself CEO Does Not Make You a CEO, by Semantik.

90% of Success is Just Showing Up

Adam Bernard has been running a lot of quality, useful articles in the past few months—from the value of an EP to the importance of small gigs—and this week, he dropped another gem: Showing up at Shows.

Also worth checking out: Adam’s analysis of first week sales figures and the tricks of the trade behind Soundscan inflation.

The Bruce Warila Curriculum

My personal favorite authors on the music business—by which I mean, the actual nuts-and-bolts business end of making a living off music, which is accessable to independents as well as people named Bronfman—are Ed Peto, Martin Atkins, and Bruce Warila, who writes for Unsprung Media and Music Think Tank.

Essential Reading

For Artists/Bands Seeking Investment Capital—this is detailed and precise how-to material for those of us who want to get real and fund large moves. You need to have your organization humming, and you need to provide a basic list of personal and business information. Warila explains it all here.

RSS for Musicians—Best overall article on the subject I found—also check out his sequels: Being Episodic and Create an Elaborate Plan.

You Will Never Get a Record Deal—a strong dose of professional clarity. Don’t take it as an insult.

11 Ways to Fix the Problem When You Work Harder Than Everyone Else—exactly what it says it is, and for most of the DIY entrepreneur cats reading this, it’s an important damn subject! This is science.

Why You Must Implement a Free Song Strategy—even if you’re already convinced, this is a good summary reader. For advice on implementing a free song strategy for free, check out the $0 Promotional Plan

Daily Routine Brainfood Regime

1. Hypebot has the best overall music news—they cover the whole industry and it’s run by a successful, and very respected, veteran who knows his science. Start here.

2. Prohiphop has the best hip hop news—same deal as above. Much respect to Clyde Smith for being a one-man CNN for all the internets. Buy him a beer.

3. Cryptogon is the best “news behind the news” site I’ve found—he’s consistent, level-headed but still bluntly honest.

4. The Big Picture is a rare example of Truth in Advertising. It delivers the macro-scale goods on a regular basis and the graphics are always exceptionally good. This means that not only are you being informed efficiently, it’s also really cool when you’re having trees for breakfast.

The Audible Hype $0 Music Promotion Plan

2008-09-07T01:30:00Z

This is dedicated to broke rappers everywhere. This is a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on setting up your online operation right. It involves spending no money whatsoever, and you could easily sit down and get it all done tonight. If you find this useful, please pass it on.

1. Get a Gmail Account.

Sign up here. This doesn’t mean you need to get rid of your existing email—you can easily set up gmail to forward your messages to your current account. Even if you’ve already got a personal gmail account, get a professional one, too: yourstagename@gmail.com just plain looks better when you’re handing out contact info.

This isn’t about looking good, though, this is about the tools that a google account will give you access to: blogger, analytics and alerts.

For more on optimizing gmail to make your life easier, check out this LifeHacker tutorial.

2. Get a Flickr Account.

For free image hosting, nothing beats Flickr. Photobucket is an unreliable and bloated piece of shit, Flickr is a truly dope free service. There is no competition. Once you’ve got your account set up, you can customize it and search to see if any of your friends and contacts are using Flickr and get in touch with them. The main workhorse function of Flickr, though, is hosting your images so that you can use them on your website. This brings us to the real meat of this article: getting your free website on Blogger.

3. Get a Blogger Account.

For those of you who can’t afford website registration and hosting, here’s a simple, reliable and free solution. I’ve talked to a number of rappers (without websites) who acknowledged they knew about the Blogger option but never signed up because it looks like shit. They’re right about that, but it’s not an excuse, just ignorance. You don’t need to use default Blogger templates, you can customize as much as you want. Take a look at the DJ Multiple Sex Partners blog: you won’t recognize anything from a cookie-cutter template:

So first things first: go to blogger and sign up right now. I generally start with one of the Minima themes—they’re the easiest to customize after the fact. Once you get the account, take these immediate steps:

Remove the two “gadgets” that come pre-loaded in the sidebar: About Me and Archive. Both of them are useless and ugly. There’s two types of gadget to add: Link Lists and HTML/Javascript. Link lists are, of course, your personal network—give some shine to artists you’re connected with, recommend websites that have been useful to you, and direct readers to your other online presences. HTML/Javascript gadgets are just a block of whatever code you want to add, such as clickable image links to download your music, or a more customized “About Me” if you want to give people a summary of what you’re about.

Here’s an example from the Algorhythms blog: we’re pushing the first EP right now, so the blog design is deliberately minimal so that the album icon will jump off the screen:

For those readers unfamiliar with basic HTML, here’s the code you’ll need to set that up for yourself:

<center><a href="insert your link url here"><img src="insert your image url here"></a><br>insert your text here</center>

Now change the actual look of your blog: go to “Fonts and Colors,” which provides you with a preview of what your site will look like. This might look overwhelming but it couldn’t be simpler: just click shit and see what happens when you change it. In the space of 3-5 minutes, you’ll be able to make your blog look pretty damn slick—or at least suit your own horrible taste.

Finally, here’s the trick for removing the Blogger-branded “navigation” bar at the top of every Blogger page: go to “Edit HTML” in your Layout panel and scroll down to the Header section:

That first line of code in the image is what you drop in, and it goes like this:

3a. Simple SEO for your Blogger Site.

I won’t get into details at all. In fact, I’ll just give you a template. What Blogger sites don’t have is metadata, and this is a huge problem. You really need the metadata in order to get ranked higher on search engines—the automated “bots” that do the indexing love metadata, and without it, they’re not interested in your little site.

First of all, put in a custom title. To do that, you’re going back to the “Layout” part of your dashboard, then clicking on “Edit HTML.” The title is up at the top, and the default code looks like this:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Delete the crap in between the two <title> tags—and put something more descriptive. For instance, on the DJ MSP Blog, I’ve got “DJ Multiple Sex Partners | World-Around Records” which covers all the major keywords I want to be known by.

Now, directly below the <title> section, make some space and insert the following code:

To give you an idea of how to fill those gaps in, here’s the metadata from the DJ Multiple Sex Partners blog:

Of course, you can get way deeper into Search Engine Optimization, but this is really all you need to start getting listed high on Google.

4. Set up Google Alerts.

Click here to get started. This is one of the single most valuable tools google has to offer—and yet I’m amazed how few people have heard of it. Here’s the deal: google will send you daily updates every time they index a page with your name on it. Every time someone mentions Algorhythms, for instance, I read about it within a day or two.

Your basic google alert regimen should be: your name, the name of every album you’ve done, and the name of your label if you have one. Personally, I have alerts set up for every artist on the World-Around roster, so some days I’ll have almost 20 alerts. Often times they’re nothing special, or material that I’ve done myself, but I find new outlets and connections multiple times a week. Knowing what people are saying about you is kinda important. Alerts save you the wasted time (and nagging shame & humiliation) of repeatedly googling yourself.

5. Set up Google Analytics.

Out here on Teh Internets, the most valuable form of information is metrics—hard data about the traffic your websites are getting. Google Analytics is powerful and free. You can get geographical breakdowns and insanely detailed reports. Here’s a sample screen—as you can see, Audible Hype really doesn’t get shit for traffic, but I’ll be honest about it:

Here’s a few of the most valuable features for the DIY hip hop entrepreneur: Keywords, which shows you what people are searching for that leads them to you, and the absurdly powerful Map Overlay, which shows you geographic breakdowns of where your visitors live. Audible Hype gets most of its traffic via Illinois (where I currently live), California and New York State:

Obviously, once you get your blog/site up and running, you want to be seeing a response in your local area. The Map Overlay will even break it down to individual cities on the state level, so you’ll be getting a detailed sense of who your site is reaching. If you find out you’re getting a ton of traffic in City X, it’s probably time to use that information and try to get some gigs in City X.

6. Get a Mediafire Account.

Mediafire is an amazing service: you can upload files up to 100mb and they’ll host it for free. They also have a great control panel where you can keep tabs on how many times your files have been downloaded. This is a valuable source of feedback: if you’re giving away a mixtape and it gets over 100 downloads, that means you definitely shouldn’t be pressing 500 copies of your next album. If you’re giving away an EP and you’re getting close to a thousand downloads, it’s probably a safe and profitable bet to press 500 copies of your next album.

This is also a great way to test your promotion. Keep track of your numbers in a notebook. Start looking for connections between your online promotion and your downloads. For instance, when you put up a myspace bulletin, what kind of impact does that actually have? Believe me, 99% of the people who click through your link and check your music out will never write to you and let you know they did.

7. Your Digital Footprint.

There’s no shortage of social networks to choose from, but there’s two that are essential for independent artists:

Last.fm. Now that myspace plays and friends can be completely fabricated, everyone’s looking for more meaningful metrics—and Last.fm provides it. Rather than restate the case for Last.fm here, let me just refer you to Andrew Dubber’s excellent summary.

Facebook. Now that Facebook has broken 100 million users, it’s probably about time for you to get yourself on Facebook Music. It’s a more complicated process than signing up for MySpace, but it’s also very much worth it. For a shining example of using Facebook right, check out the QN5 page.

Right now, I’m running a World-Around Twitter account—you can check it out here—but it’s very much an experiment. I am assuming that by providing a steady stream of useful information, I can make it into a valued resource for people. So rather than updating about what I’m eating for dinner, the WAR Twitter will be focused on good information and links to quality articles. If you’ve got experience using Twitter as a promotional platform, I would love to hear from you.

Of course, I’m assuming you already have a Myspace account—if you’re looking for advice on how to run that more efficiently, I’ve already covered that topic: How to Defeat and Kill the Devil MySpace.

Finally, don’t build your own social network. Your fans, and potential future fans, are already on multiple social networks your requests will only be an annoyance for them. Besides, every major hip hop label is trying to do the same thing, and you’re not going to beat out Rawkus or Loud anytime soon. Use existing social networks—it’s a bigger audience and you don’t have to do as much work. This seems obvious enough, yet I’m constantly getting requests from chump rappers to join Ning sites with less than 20 users. We are all idiots at times, and we are all assholes at times, but avoid doing both at once.

Last Word

Once you’ve completed this, you’ve got the platform. Your online presence looks professional and you have all the tools you need to push your music on the internets, and get valuable feedback about how your efforts are going.

As I wrote this, I was trying to “un-know” all of the technical crap that I take for granted. If you have questions, or suggestions for improvement, please pass those along. I want to make this the best resource possible. Also, check out the Audible Hype forums, which I’ve been loading up with useful content for a couple months now.

Thanks, and good luck.

Getting Ready for a Long Cold Winter

2008-08-28T08:35:00Z

One thing is already pretty clear: 2008 is not going to be a good year for the United States of America. Although Audible Hype is allegedly about DIY hip hop and making a living off music, let’s all pause to acknowledge the grim panorama of The Big Picture. The United States economy is currently bleeding to death and we’re headed for a long cold winter. With bank failures and corporations collapsing, the losses of jobs and property will have thousands of complex and horrible effects. Here’s one that’s insignifigant to everyone but Audible Hype readers: everyone will have way less money for CDs. For T-shirts. For vinyl. Even for shows.

This obviously points towards a narrowing market, and as a total unknown with a startup independent label, you can bet I’m super-psyched about this. The rest of 2008 will be a challenge for everyone, especially the little guys. This is about how to survive and thrive—simple concepts, proven techniques, and valuable role models.

Start with Simple Psychology.

Here’s the single biggest thing you’ve got going for you: everyone else is getting frustrated and having a hard time, too. When the going gets hard, what do you do?

Statistically, you give up. Yep. That is what the majority of people do when they’re frustrated. I know a couple hundred insanely talented rappers who got sick of dealing with the bullshit, and they gave up. During bleak times, simple tenacity will win out over most any other strategy.

Music At A Price Your Customers Can Afford

Free CDs will never go out of style. Like any tool, there’s a right way to use them, and a surefire method for acting retarded. I’ve seen a lot of people walk through a bar, hand a CD to everyone that would reflexively reach for one, say the same single sentence script to every person, and walk out feeling like they’d accomplished something. They did: they just wasted a medium-sized chunk of money and provided another small life irritation for a bunch of bar patrons.

Telemarketers are assholes, right? So don’t market like a telemarketer. Free CDs will never go out of style because they’re always appreciated by people who want your music. When someone asks me if I’ve got a CD out and I can just hand them one, I know there’s a 50% chance they’ll actually listen to it. When I walk around confronting people, with no context, and giving out that same CD, I know there’s a .05% chance they’ll actually listen to it.

Only One Part Actually Matters.

I realize that what I advocate here at Audible Hype is not for everyone. I do get plenty of emails from artists who think I’m giving them “too much homework,” and I love getting that kind of feedback because it’s a daily reminder of how weak most of you humans are. I appreciate the encouragement.

Between the recording, the mixing, the mastering, the design, the manufacturing, the promotion, the marketing, the booking, the touring, the research, the reading, the websites, the blogs, I know. It’s a ton of tiny detail shitwork, but I’m putting this early in the article because I’ll drive it home again at the end. Only one part actually matters, and that’s your relationship with your fans. As long as you stay in touch with them and treat them with love and respect, you’ll survive into 2010.

Up Your Skillz

Let me introduce you to Nick Williams. Nick is a pretty amazing drummer, but he’s also a lighting designer, a live sound tech, a beat producer, a soundtrack composer, and one of the fastest Pro Tools engineers I’ve ever worked with...oh, and a “Geek Squad” manager at the local Best Buy. (I’m waiting tables, myself.) The point I’m making is far from original but it needs to be repeated: most of the normal people in your life will tell you that you “do too much”—the reality is that you’re not doing nearly enough. The more you can develop new, useful skills with your free time, the more you can accomplish in the future, and the less you’ll have to rely on other people.

Other people, as we all know, are notoriously unpredictable.

Focus on Meaningful Metrics

Hip hop is a street culture and putting up flyers is a rite of passage for literally millions of kids around the world. I’m a hick from Vermont, though, and I think of advertising as a form of pollution. We burn down billboards where I come from, so you can imagine how I feel about putting up posters around town. In any mid-sized city, there’s about 20-30 stores that are worth putting up a colorful, well-designed poster in. These are the venues that your demographic is actually going to on a regular basis, and these are the venues that will actually keep your poster up and display it prominently.

Internet marketing, in case you haven’t noticed yet, is pretty much FUCKING AMAZING. For instance, it costs you money to print up posters and put them up around town, yet it can make you money to do promotions online. Here’s another great example: unless people specifically tell you where and how they heard about your event, you’ll never know what worked and what was wasted effort when you do a print campaign. On the internet, however, you get automatic feedback, site metrics, user data—from everyone who sees your promo.

Helpful hint: download statistics are the most reliable indicator of album sales. Your myspace friend count reflects reality about as much as the mind of George W. Bush does. So rather than fight piracy, host your music yourself. You can do this right now, for free, via MediaFire, who are professional and upstanding folks.

When You Have Time But Not Money...

...obviously, you invest the time. I am really staying on my own case in 2008: I can’t be wasting time with bitchery and complainifying. Time spent “explaining” why I can’t afford to manufacture and promote my albums is wasted time. I have plenty of work to put in, and until I have my operation running right, I would be insane to expect money. (Especially based on some notion that I “deserve” it because of some magical “talent.")

Likewise, most of the rappers who contact me via Audible Hype complaining about how hard it is to promote their albums have not taken any of the simple, powerful and free steps that you can take right now. Do you have a blog? Get one for free right now. Do you have a paypal account? Do that. Get your music on Facebook, Last.fm and iLike, tonight.

If you don’t have the computer skills, that’s actually not an excuse. From html to css to photoshop to pro tools, anything you need to learn, you can find excellent free tutorials to teach you, online, right now.

Remember, depression is counterproductive and self-indulgent. The time you spend brooding is time you could spend building.

Role Model #1: Tonedeff

Even people who hate on Tonedeff’s music admit he’s one of the most skilled rappers on a mic. Critics are probably not what bothers Tonedeff, though: what worries him is people who’ve never heard of Tonedeff. The man is fiercely independent and he’s one of the best living examples of DIY hip hop you can study. He’s built his label, QN5, into a powerhouse. Anyone can jack up their myspace play counts, but you can’t fake metrics like the CunninLynguist’s Last.Fm stats.

You produce, emcee, sing, run your own label, produce for your artists, feature on a variety of projects, perform a great live show, back your artists up on stage, how do you have the time and energy for all that?

Tonedeff: I don’t have any time, basically my life is a series of chores, tasks, favors, deadlines and money stress, that’s my life. Ever since I was a kid I just always wanted to make records and put things together. I really enjoy being a collaborative person, working with other people and helping their sh*t look better and sound better via my talent. Anyway that I can help, because I like to see people succeed and I’m a real team player. In fact I tend to help other people more than I help myself.

Role Model #2: Wordsmith

I start my day at 4:00 AM, 5 days a week and travel over an hour from Baltimore to Washington DC for work. During the drive, I am usually practicing my lyrics for different songs I want to perform at upcoming shows. When I get to my job, I carry in a book bag that has my rhymebook(s), beat CD’s, and 100 blank CD’s into work. I do an important job, but that doesn’t stop me from spending all 8 of my hours at work burning copies..

That’s just a small sampling of what Wordsmith has to offer. The dude is an inspiration and a great reality check: if there’s anyone in your city hustling as hard as Wordsmith, they’re already eating your food. That doesn’t mean you failed at life, just means you’ve got some catch-up work ahead of you. Start here.

Wordsmith also faces the classic emcee problem of someone else biting your name. In his case, that someone else is a slightly goofy looking kid from the UK, and a much younger cat from Rhode Island so for what it’s worth, Audible Hype is only concerned with the real Wordsmith from Baltimore.

Role Model #3: Atmosphere

It’s worth considering that maybe hip hop is suffering because 99.9% of you are doing it wrong. There’s an independent group out of Minnesota—seriously—who had their last album debut at number 5 on the charts. Not the college radio charts, the Billboard Top 200—so clearly Atmosphere is doing something right. Here’s a break down from Brent “Siddiq” Sayers, courtesy of this highly educational article from Pulse:

“Atmosphere’s the flagship artist: Sean [Slug] has been doing this longer than any of them and has built Atmosphere to the point, touring-wise, that they can sell out bigger rooms. So he’ll bring [Brother] Ali out on the Godlovesugly tour when he’s never been out there before. It’s up to the artist to put on a great show and be responsible, but they learn because they watch Sean: Sean’s on time, Sean does all his interviews. Sometimes we’ll do 16, 17 shows in a row non-stop. So when you roll like that, you learn the ropes. We brought Ali out, P.O.S. went out the same way and it’s been continuous where we bring developing artists out and they see from the ground level how much work this really is. Touring has been that foundation pretty much since the beginning and at least since I’ve been here.

That was part of my goal: to really implement a touring structure in Rhymesayers, because that’s one of the things I first saw when I saw Atmosphere play the Entry. When I met Sean, I was like, man, you gotta take it on the road. We just started doing it, grinding it. Driving to Texas, doing a show. Going to Chicago, doing a show and driving back overnight because people had to work the next day. Sleeping on people’s floors. Whatever it took. A lot of people that are newer don’t know that it’s been a long time coming. Atmosphere didn’t just sell 100,000 records.

The Last Word from Seth Godin

This passage from his recent article, The Secret of the Web, really resonated with me. Well, more accurately, it really, really pissed me off because it confirmed one of my darker suspicions. Running World-Around Records is rewarding, but mostly frustrating as fuck. The gap between putting in work and seeing the results is something I constantly have a hard time with. I constantly have to remind myself that this is a path I chose, consciously and deliberately, and this frustration is the inevitable consequence of Doing It Right.

I’m not doing this to make money. I’m doing this to make music for a living. I’m doing this to build something larger than myself that will create positive changes.

Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.

Resources for Dedicated Primates

If blogging and internet media is new to you, there’s 10,000 blogs about blogging. Pretty much all of them are superficial horseshit, but the greatest exception is DoshDosh, written by a Pseudonym pseudonamed Maki. . Every article is a tutorial, raising detailed questions and providing detailed answers. It’s an amazingly useful resource and it helped us out at Back Brain Media, especially in the past year.

Start with his concept of “Opportunity Costs”—and if you’ve never heard of SWOT Analysis, get familiar with the most important tool a DIY capitalist could have. I also highly recommend his reality check, Social Media Networking and Return on Investment”.

Other important articles for beginners: How to Promote Your Website for $100, Blogging Mistakes Roundup, and finally The “Free” Business Model: A Strategy for Attention, Traffic and Profits.

Another great resource is Andrew Dubber, author of New Music Strategies, and the excellent report “20 Things You Must Know”, which is still the most relevant and concise dose of reality I’ve found. Dubber is currently working on the (insanely ambitious and quite admirable) sequel, which will basically be the most complete FAQ for music promotion online in human history.

Here’s a few exceptionally useful chapters:

Are CDs Dead?

How Can I Sell My Music Online?

Is the Long Tail Good for Musicians?

It’s Actually Not a Competition

Your fans will be your fans no matter what.

Your fans are not into 95% of other rappers, but they are into you.

Most of who you consider competition actually pose no threat to your success or your fanbase.

Most of them are in fact struggling musicians just like you.

Most of them could probably help you out, if you swallow your pride and make contact.

Most of the time, we waste our time.

We can always be working on improving our own operations.

We can always be doing more to help.

The DIY Hip Hop Business Master Class

2008-08-21T21:02:00Z

This is a collection of the best, most useful highlights from interviews with hip hop legends and DIY entrepreneurs. There’s tons more information in the Audible Hype forums, and if you’re new to the site, start here.

?uestlove

When we were out there on The Chronic battlefield, from ‘92 to ‘97, me and Rich [The Roots’ longtime manager] were racking our brains on how to escape from the pack, how to matter. A lot of people accuse of us over-thinking. And that’s OK. But we looked at every successful artist. We pored over charts in industry magazines going back decades, looking for commonality. And what we found was that anyone who was successful was not isolated. Besides a couple of one-hit wonders in the ‘60s (there was no ‘movement’ behind “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” or “Monstermash"), every big act was part of a larger movement. The Beatles were by no means by themselves. The British Invasion also meant that you had the Stones, the Kinks, The Who. Likewise with hard rock—Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin—or the Philadelphia sound—Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, the Three Degrees.

Once Illadeph came out, me and Rich were like, we’ve got to get a movement. We weren’t trying to be the Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer of this. So around ‘97 or ‘98, when we went to Geffen, we told them upfront that the only way this was gonna work was if we could be like Noah and bring a bunch of other complementary artists on board with us.

Source: Indy Week

Wendy Day

The basis of any successful project is the music. The music must be banging and must have appeal outside your inner circle. That means you don’t just play it for your boys, you play it for people you don’t know who are most likely to be honest with you about whether or not it’s on point. When putting out Do Or Die’s first single in Chicago, “Po’ Pimp,” we gathered together all the local mix show DJs, club DJs, and some of the local retailers and played a few songs for them. They unanimously picked Po’ Pimp as their favorite song, so Do Or Die had reconfirmed exactly which single to press up (and the DJs felt like they played a part in choosing the single). Why spend tens of thousands of dollars on pressing and promotions if you aren’t certain you’ll have the support of the local DJs and stores?

Once you decide on the first single and press up your record, you market it within a small geographic area that you can affordably control. Unless you are backed by millions of dollars and a flawless major distributor, you don’t want to start nationally because you can’t be everywhere in the country at once. The larger labels have staffs and budgets to accommodate a national release, but since you don’t, start with just your city or town and no more than a few nearby. I usually draw a circle around the city where the artist is based. I make the circle about a three to five hour driving radius, and that becomes the target area.

Make certain you’ve done the research in all of the areas you choose where the record will sell. Choose areas where the artists can travel cheaply and easily, since they may need to travel often into those areas to support the record. For example, it would not be a wise decision to choose New York, Houston, and the Bay Area for simultaneous release because the airfare alone would kill you financially every time your artist needed to travel to support the record at radio or retail or with a show.

Source: The Day Report

Paul Wall

“When I was 14, that’s when my life changed because that’s when I got really heavy into street promotions. I worked and did a lot of stuff for Def Jam and stuff for Cash Money, before they signed their major deal. But, doing the street promotion, a lot of that was me just learning and working the game because I was always taught and my mother always embedded in me, that if you work, you’re going to get paid.

If you don’t work, you’re not going to get paid and no one was going to give me sh-t. So I took that aspect and worked, worked, worked. I built up reputations with different store owners being that I was doing retail promotions and different DJs being that I would service them with records. When I brought them the new Jay-Z record, they remembered me like, “What’s up.” I built those relationships up. . . I still took that job with pride, worked it to the best of my ability and it gave me respect within the industry to what I was doing: building up relationships and rapport with different record labels or producers.”

Source: Baller Status

El-P

In the early days of your career, what do you think paid off most for you? Because it isn’t always a given that talent is going to rise to the surface, and nowadays the industry is even more oversaturated.

It’s a combination of a complete, blind arrogance—don’t let anyone tell you that you suck, even if you suck—and ridiculous amounts of energy and overstated ambition. That’s it. If you have those things, just keep fucking going until you can’t. If it changes or you don’t like it anymore, move the fuck on. Until then, just write and be passionate and do the thing you believe in, period. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.

Source: The Red Alert

As being the leading figure of Def Jux, do you need to do some A&R or are the albums the people hand in, in no need for you to do anything?

I definitely get down and dirty with cats and build with them about their records. I don’t cross the line, but I’m really interested in what cats are trying to do. And I think that a lot of times the cats that I work with, are interested in talking it out with me. Obviously on the CanOx album I played a big role. I think I played a very big role in the Mr Lif album, even in the EP. Because we are just really good friends, and we always build with each other about shit. With a cat like Aesop, I just let him do his fuckin’ thing.

When I met Aesop, he had two albums under his belt. So he just kinda gave his album to me. With Murs, it’s pretty much the same thing, except of the collaborations that we did. So it really depends. It depends on what the relationship is. It depends on what the vibe is. I’m certainly not the type of cat to, infringe on somebody’s ideas. What I do do, is, if they want it, I give suggestions, in terms of anything that I can help with. But I do believe in trusting people. Trusting the artist. Because I always wanted people to trust me. And I hated to be in a situation where I had to explain something to somebody, who clearly wasn’t feeling what I was feeling. I don’t think it’s ever really like that at Def Jux. If anything, it’s all on some positive reinforcement shit.

I like to get down with cats that really think about it. Cause everyone knows it’s a team effort, and you want everybody to come up with the best possible thing going. But I would never, for instance, give a suggestion what to write a song about. Or, ‘why don’t you do the chorus like this?’ That’s not my shit. But if somebody wants to talk about help with producers, or sequence the album. Or an idea for a way to bring the concept they have in mind to life, I’m 100% down to talk about it. But at the end of the day, it’s up to the person whose record it is, to either take my suggestion or not. I try to be there if they have a questions and if they trust what I try to say.

Source: Urban Smarts

iCon the Mic King

What’s your perspective on the business of collaborations? Can established rappers make good income off that, or do they mostly undervalue their verses and beats?

“Collaborations are a complicated issue, man! I don’t personally believe it does much to validate anyone especially in the information age. I feel like people download the song and skip to featured verse listen to it a couple times and then erase the song. Let’s say it’s a hot song, it’s a hot song of yours that you can’t really perform unless that person is around. Businesswise it’s both. Established rappers can make good income off it but a smart businessman prices his product in the range of his customer so you have [insert rapper here] selling verses on his myspace for $500 or [insert producer here] selling beats for $50. I understand where they are coming in that you price it lower you sell a bunch, but it destroys utility. Most times people ask me to collab and I request what I am worth they say “well I can get [insert rapper here] for $500 man you gotta come down.” The economies of scale of collaborating are much different now than when rappers were much less accessible.”

Source: Audible Hype, baby

DJ Vlad

A lot of people email me everyday to try to ‘network’. Most of the time, they don’t understand what networking really means.

Your network is people that you have done actual business with - not people that you have seen in the club. I’ve had conversations with Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Puffy multiple times. I didn’t have any business that I could bring to them at that time, so they’re not in my network.

“I’m hot but I’m broke, put me on” is begging.

“I’ve got a project with a budget that I want to work with you on. We have $10,000 dollars for you upfront” is networking.

Professionals network with other professionals. Hobbyists network with other hobbyists. If you make your living off your music - you’re a professional. If you don’t earn your living off your music - you’re a hobbyist. This is not my opinion - it’s the dictionary definition.

Slug

“I don’t really do many collabs, but when I do I hardly charge people. Anyone I do charge, it’s because I know they have a budget and when I do charge I make them give it to charity. I don’t actually collect a check from them. My job in this shit isn’t to make money off of my voice or my rapping, but to figure out how to be good enough business wise, to make my art make my money for me, rather than make the art the money.

Sales are one thing, but to me those are called royalties. It’s not like every time you buy a CD I’m popping off. No, you buy a CD and you’re helping me cover the cost of making the damn CD for starters. You’re also helping me cover the cost of bringing the CD to your city, bringing a tour to your city that is also bringing three other rap groups to your city that you may have never experienced. It’s not like I’ve got this incredibly genius business strategy. I ain’t really supposed to get rich off of rapping; I’m supposed to get rich off of everything else that makes itself available to me because I rap.

I really don’t give a fuck if people hate me. The elitists or the underground people that say “ohh fuck him, he’s a sell out.” Naw, actually fuck off. I know what I’m doing. I know what my choruses sound like. I know what my beats sound like. I’ve never paid anyone to play my record. I’ve never played any of the games trying to sell lots of records. The closest I’ve come is making videos, but videos are fun, man. I didn’t make videos so that MTV would play them. Hell, MTV didn’t play the shit. I made them because I wanted a visual to go with the song.”

Source: Impose Magazine

Buck 65

“For me and for most musicians these days, we pretty much have one option left to put a career together, which is to tour. And to really make a living, you’ve got to tour all the time. But if that’s becoming the case for everybody, you’re going to have every band on the road all the time,” Halifax-bred hip-hop MC/producer Rich “Buck 65” Terfry, who handles most of his own touring affairs, recently remarked to me.

“When I was booking the tour I’m currently starting in the U.S., we were having some real problems. We wanted to go into, you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico, during this particular week, but even way in advance there were so many other bands and only so many rooms. And we came to find out that we’re in a time right now that’s kind of unprecedented in the amount of bands that are out there on the road. So that’s going to spread things a little thin.”

Source: The Star

Of Course There’s Gonna Be a Sequel...

This is not the end. There’s a lot more information floating around out there—and a thousand more voices I could have included. If you’ve got suggestions, quotes, or just a heads-up on people I should be checking out, please leave a comment and LET A MAMMAL KNOW. Thank you.

The No Bullshit Guide Hip Hop Demographics, Part One

2008-08-04T16:30:00Z

Did you know that even the biggest record labels on Earth right now are scrambling, just as much as you and I are, to figure out what’s going on? “Demographics” sounds scientific as all hell, I know, but it was mostly (over)educated guesswork right up until the past five years or so. Thanks the the growing science of data mining, and the explosive growth of consumer databases to mine, demographics is starting to resemble actual math based on reality.

As we learn to tame the flood of new information and make sense of the patterns, the real demographics of hip hop are finally starting to emerge:

The global hip hop community: twenty four million people between the ages of 19-34, from a range of nationalities, ethnic groups and religions. Their collective spending power is $500 billion annually in the U.S. alone.

That’s from a Tech Crunch article on a “hip hop culture” effort from Accel Partners and Russell Simmons called Global Grind. It’s one of over a dozen conflicting but authoritative-sounding estimates that I’ve found in the course of researching this article.

As much as I’d like to just give you the numbers, I can’t do that. Information is power, and the corporations who own these databases are in no rush to make their information public. The waters get murkier when multiple, rival consultant firms, like Ypulse for example, issue conflicting (and insanely expensive) “White Paper” reports. These reports are based on taking a small body of private research and extrapolating those numbers to fit a vastly larger sample: usually the entire consumer base of the United States. This obviously leads to some very suspect numbers, so we’re left with an incomplete puzzle. Rather than give you conclusions, I’m going to give you all the available resources in one place. This is an exploration, not a simple answer.

Did you know that 37.1% of 15-25-year-olds in China love hip hop? Remember, that figure is from yet another expensive white paper, but it’s worth thinking about. According to Chinese government statistics, the 15-29 demographic makes up 22.8% of the population. Considering we’re talking about China here, that’s around 296 million—in other words, a core hip hop demographic about the same size as the entire United States. Food for thought, and also a much larger figure than the “24 million” that Russell Simmons was pushing earlier.

Cracker Mythology 101

Yeah, everyone knows that the majority of hip hop listeners are rich white kids in high school, if not younger. What’s also fascinating is that nobody can back that up with any information whatsoever.

Normally, I’d make an impassioned plea for people to stop being dumb, but I’d actually like to encourage it. Your laziness and gullibility will make my own success that much easier, and I thank you. Audible Hype, of course, is written for the smart kids. Finding accurate, detailed information about the demographics of hip hop and the raw numbers behind the record business is not simple.

...but it is possible.

Thank God for Davey D

Davey D has been a shining example of hip hop journalism for a long damn time, and he said it straight: “The truth of the matter is that this 80% white Hip Hop fan myth has long been a nice marketing tool used by media corporations to justify ad revenues for Top 40 radio stations.” His article on this myth is a beautiful beat-down and very much worth reading.

It started in 1991 when Newsweek Magazine did a cover story on Gangsta Rap and in their article they put out an un-researched statistic that said 80% of Hip Hop’s audience is white and that its reflected in record sales. That stat has been bantered about ever since as an undisputable stone cold fact.

...Top 40 stations had this Newsweek quote along with their CHR status that they could present to ad buyers. Essentially they were able to say, ‘yes we’re playing Public Enemy, NWA and 2 Live Crew, but this is what the mainstream (white audience wants). Look at this Newsweek article. It’s proof positive that 80% of the people who like this aggressive music are the main ones purchasing it.

What wasn’t really publicly known or even taken into account was how Asians were classified when it came to radio ratings. They were always counted as white people.

As you can see, this brings us back to corporations and private databases. Once you start a culture of competitive intelligence, you’re creating a powerful incentive for disinformation as a strategy. This leads to headaches. Since we’re dealing with a hall of mirrors and conflicting opinion, let’s get some clarity, shall we?

The Outer Limits

When you’re dealing with a massive system of unknown size, it’s helpful to start with the extremes. For instance, on a planet with over 6 billion humans, you can rest assured that over 70% of them cannot afford to buy enough food, let alone your album, so we’ve already whittled things down considerably. Canada has 33 million people, the UK has over 60 million, and America is past 300 million humans, mostly overweight people with horrible taste in music. All told, that’s a potential audience of just under 400 million people—but how many of them like beats and rhymes?

As it turns out, it’s hard to even get a straight answer on what the best-selling hip hop album of all time was. According to most sources, it’s still MC Hammer’s timeless masterpiece ”Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em,” which moved 20 million copies. The fact that Eminem’s Marshall Mathers EP sold 21 million copies would seem to deny Hammer’s claim to anything but novelty status.

Let’s not be intimidated by huge numbers, though. Music is a big landscape with a lot of money flying around. Wu Tang Forever sold 8 million copies and they can still go on world tour whenever they want, with $40 ticket prices in most cities. Dudes like us are just trying to fill up local venues and turn a profit off a hobby, and that’s a much more attainable goal.

Up next, I’m going to be taking a look at hands-on demographics for underground hip hop artists. In the past decade, we’ve seen a new standard of success emerge—not exactly superstars, but sure as hell not broke, either. We’ll call it “Underground Famous.”

Meanwhile, here’s some tools and information for you to keep doing your own research. I’m also highly interested in any feedback and pointers the readers have got. Thank you for your time.

--Justin Boland

Five Star Resources

Bruce Warila of Unsprung Media maintains a list of music industry facts and figures, a pipeline of important and current data, complete with citations. Thank you, Bruce.

The Hip Hop Demographic Project is a worthy, and especially thought-provoking, contribution to the study.

The entire demographics archive over at Pro Hip Hop is a mixed bag with a great deal of gems.

Pew Internet report on Teens and Social Media.

And of course, enjoy the bounty of Wikipedia: Marketing Research * Market Segments * Competitor Analysis * and if you’re really ready to dive in, Consumer Theory.