Success Of Mixtapes Finally Making Major Labels Realize That 'Free' Can Be Useful Marketing
from the not-so-awful dept
We were amazed a few years ago when the RIAA, with the help of law enforcement, started going after DJs who made mixtapes, even though those same mixtapes were considered a huge part of the promotional infrastructure of certain parts of the music world (mainly hip hop, but certainly elsewhere as well). Of course, after shutting down and arresting a bunch of mixtape DJs, a bunch of artists just started making and releasing their own damn mixtapes, and doing so for free online. And even though we still see some stories of the RIAA going after "officially released" mixtapes, it seems that even the labels are starting to recognize that free mixtapes help promote artists and aren't worth freaking out about:"The game favors people that can produce quality music and then turn right around and produce more quality music-which is not a given," Atlantic Records VP of A&R Zvi Edelman says. His signee, Wiz Khalifa, leveraged free, original mixtapes like 2010's "Kush & OJ" and 2011's "Cabin Fever" into the building of a dedicated fan base that helped, along with an intensive touring strategy, make his Atlantic/Rostrum Records debut, "Rolling Papers," one of the few hip-hop debuts to sell more than 500,000 copies (it's now at 570,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan) in 2011.This might be about as close as you can come to big record labels officially admitting that free music actually has value that is monetized elsewhere. But, still, apparently, we need special new laws to shut down the very same marketing that they now want to use to build a stronger fan base.
A batch of newcomers -- such as J. Cole, Big Sean, Dom Kennedy, Mac Miller and Smoke DZA -- has adapted to the consumer demand for free, original rap music. The philosophy is often described this way: As a reward for artists remaining loyal to them (by giving away original music), fans return the favor by buying concert tickets, merchandise and "real" albums from record labels. The result is a give-and-take relationship that keeps rappers in control of their brand and marketing, and iTunes playlists full of free albums disguised as "mixtapes." The payoff is an active fan base, which labels and management hope stimulates retail purchases.
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"If the record labels were any more full of shit, they'd be winning the Economic Darwin Awards."
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Now Now.....
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Hell hath frozen over
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Re: Hell hath frozen over
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Stiff Records (Moto: If it Ain't Stuff, it Ain't Worth a Fuck) did the same thing in the punk heyday, widely distributing compilations from their lesser known (or often unknown) bands as a way to get them exposure.
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Re: Why mix tapes are news now
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stop whining start doing
if i don't like how someone runs their business, i can always start my own. that would be more productive than trying to convince someone i don't like to give me their product the way i want them to
you are all a bunch of whiny immature and impotent babies. go find something PRODUCTIVE to do on your own
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Re: stop whining start doing
Once again, I did stop lustening. Then I was accused of being a pirate when I explained why and all the "losses" that occurred were assumed to be due to piracy, not because I didn't want their crap.
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They were told this 10 years ago..
Please understand. The majors had all the chances in the world to sort it out, but they couldn't. I had met with streaming locker music services as far back as 2001! Everyone was doing what Apple was doing before Apple did it. But the labels wouldn't grant licenses. Even if they met our strict DRM, Codec, and Security mandates. Why can I say this, because I was responsible for conducting the due-diligence for the digital catalog licenses. I would approve a service but corporate wouldn't grant the license because all the labels were positioning themselves against the other majors.
Apple was the only one who could come in and give them what they wanted. A guaranteed adaption of the service. The labels knew that Apple had one thing.. the strength of millions of Apple Fanboys who were just waiting to buy whatever Steve Jobs told them to buy. So even though countless other services were ready to launch with better services then iTunes.. They were disregarded by the labels..
Do you want to see proof. At BMG, I managed the development and launch of the first B2B streaming music video platform in 2001. Go look it up on Google.. the press releases were all there. We were ready to launch with 2000+ music videos, streamed, and protected by network based backend DRM (Geographical Rights Management by the way of Akamai's edge server network.. which Akamai and I thought up while in meetings together. Until then they had never used a edge server router ID as a means to check rights to stream content to a geographical area.
Proof: http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2000/press_111600a.html
I had a front seat to Napster fiasco on the label side. I literally came to work one day and found out that I was now suing my own parent company Bertelsmann. We then pushed to convert Napster into a label before Andreas Schmidt got ahold of it and fucked the whole thing up by wasting millions on something that never saw the light of day. My Streaming Video platform only costed us about 400k to develop. Guess what, I actually launched it for beta. Napster died in BeEcommerce groups hands. Remember the famous.. .nap file idea.. I mean you had the wrong people making decisions that they had no clue about.. while the smart people who they specifically hired like myself to tell them what to do.. were ignored.. and then later cast out and blamed. When really.. the blame lays on the execs who couldn't let the good old days go, and made careers out of stifling innovation as if their entire industry was depending on them to do it.
I also chaired SDMI meetings with Carrey Sherman. People don't realize that the majors never changed.. they just went out and co-opted all the indie labels.. Taking chunks in turn for distribution deals. If anyone wants the story about what really happened during 2000-2002.. Contact me.. its been 10 years.. the world should know, and I am ready to tell. I would like to write a book on it.
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Re: They were told this 10 years ago..
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Once they let go of their stranglehold on the industry then we can start moving into the 21st century.
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