Marketing Hip-Hop Online

Nicely written piece by DJ Xplosive (XplosiveWorld.com) with an impressive take on Hip-Hop music, industry and adaptation that can easily be applied to many different industries, companies and marketing strategies.

A couple of excerpts:

I’m proposing a stimulus plan that calls on some of hip-hop’s most powerful names to start releasing the music they have been holding back (and, by the way, do it for free). Dr. Dre, we need you right now. Jay-Z, let’s start getting those tracks from Blueprint 3 out to the masses. This message applies to everyone who is holding back gems because they are waiting for the climate to improve. I’m here to tell you the climate for releasing an album is never going to get any better. Hip-hop fans need to be hit by a barrage of new music that reminds us of why we fell in love with this culture to begin with. Our morale couldn’t go any lower.

and

I believe that getting fans excited about the music again is the first step in revitalizing hip-hop culture. It would provide a renewed sense of optimism among hip-hop fans, which I believe would improve conditions throughout the industry. Much like the stimulus plan recently passed by the Obama administration, the results of this stimulus also may not be immediate.

This stimulus plan involves improving our psyche, rather than serving to benefit anyone financially. The money will come, but that’s not what is most important right now. We as fans need to love hip-hop again. Improving the quality of music and providing the industry with something we can truly be excited about will most certainly lead to a revised plan from the hip-hop community as a whole. While sales may not improve, it will actually encourage people to start thinking of ways to become profitable in this new age of music whether it’s from becoming smarter in tour packaging to creating new online revenue streams. The desire to fix the problem will grow stronger once the overall morale is improved.

Right now everyone is dumbfounded, looking for a solution to the problem of the internet. In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is anarchy. There is not going to be a solution, formula or even a game plan that works because we can’t control an environment that evolves through unfettered innovation. The best the industry will be able to do is quickly adapt to change. That means if your label, management company or agency isn’t staffed primarily by a bunch of internet geeks that are able to identify trends, stop on a dime and shift gears in the way they’re working, then you’re fucked.

I’m also working with a client in the journalism industry, trying to convince them to embrace, adapt and adopt new media strategies, and what jumped out at me after reading this posting, is the similar message. Creating excitement. Without the people evangelizing your brand, or your industry, they will undoubtedly succumb to the naysayers and gloom-and-doomers, dragging you down with it. Today’s industries, especially those dealing with different forms of media, MUST NOT WASTE TIME wondering when and if and how. They must plunge in, feet first, and become a part of this new wave of industrialism or they will simply be left behind. No one knows the answers yet, so get in there and figure it out as you go along like the rest of us. Don’t wait for the next company or entity to figure it out. BE the next company or entity.

Good post Xplosive. Read his whole post here.

Noticed a posting over at MarketingBreakdown.com where Allen Woodstrom feels that hip-hop artists are not having any particular success marketing themselves through Twitter. Which is true, except that it’s not. He states, for example:

MySpace and Facebook have two major things that Twitter does not: users and features. It was estimated that Twitter has about 3.5 million active users. Compare that to Facebook and MySpace, who respectively have 175 and 110 million users and it’s clear which network has the greatest opportunity for exposure.

Unfortunately, he bases this judgment largely on major, established artists, (who are really not even trying to market themselves much on Twitter in the first place. They don’t need to.) It’s a little strange that he wonders about whether Twitter can launch a career like MySpace did to Soulja Boy and Sean Kingston, but his ‘research’ doesn’t take strong upcoming artists into consideration, when many (@charleshamilton, @mickeyfactz, @asherroth) have a good presence on Twitter, and smartly so, as Twitter users skew to include bloggers and journalists, the exact crowd who have been hyping the next generation of hip-hop artists in the first place.

What Mr. Woodstrom doesn’t realize is that the discovered-through-MySpace-buzz phenomenon is turning into the discovered-through-blogger-buzz phenomenon, which is fueled more by the type of folks who are heavy Twitter users, then by the regular MySpace users, regardless of how many there are. To say that hip-hop artists are not finding success using Twitter is not quite accurate, and premature.

- @MannyFaces

Despite the fact that I am actually my own favorite white boy, my e-friend B-Double presents a great post detailing the importance of, and methods used to obtain favorable Digg.com traffic for your hip-hop related content.

Here’s an excerpt from the original post:

What these and other successful hip-hop related posts tell you is that your best bet is to stick to humor, amazing video or explaining events, styles, lingo, etc in hip-hop.  Most Digg users go onto the site for entertainment purposes.  Its not that your 5-part J Dilla tribute isn’t important, Digg may just be the wrong place to post it.

[YourFavoriteWhiteBoy.com]

50 Cent aka Pimpin' Curly

The 50 Cent/Rick Ross ‘beef’ is difficult to ignore if you are a follower of things hip-hop. It is at the same time, entertaining, exciting, childish and distracting. Since hip-hop has a long celebrated history of competitiveness, at best on wax, and at worst, spilling over into ‘real-life’, hip-hop purists are not overly critical of the escalation of tensions between Miami’s Ross and NY’s 50. Though there are many around the blogosphere who would suggest that the concept of beef in hip-hop is played out, the competition and creativity often associated with hip-hop confrontation is undeniably unique, and a guilty pleasure enjoyed by many.

A recent post on DJ Brandi Garcia’s blog on GlobalGrind.com on the subject, struck me however.

Officer Ricky Cartoon

Essentially, Ms. Garcia genuinely seems to enjoys the banter and multimedia assault being dished out by megastar 50 Cent, admiring his creativity and determination to ridicule Rick Ross and in effect, damage or end his career. I completely agree with Brandi Garcia on her post, and find the same sense of enjoyment from the proceedings.

I also agree completely with her when she says, “I think so long as this stays on records and the internet and doesn’t go into the streets on some foolishness then its great for the game.  Definitely entertaining and isn’t this called the ‘entertainment business’?“. Of course, we all want this to be about competitiveness and oneupsmanship,  and not result in any actual confrontation, but it is the ‘entertainment business’ portion of her comment is what struck me as interesting, and again, while I completely agree, I have some thoughts on this, which I posted on her blog as a comment, and will also post here.

What are your thoughts?

Hey Brandi -

The way I have been thinking of this whole 50/Ross thing, ties into something you said. “Entertainment” business.

The problem to me is, I kinda thought this was supposed to be the “music” business, and even before that, just hip-hop. Oh I love a good rap battle, but that’s my point.

Where’s the rapping?

I see videos, YouTube, websites, blog posts, baby mamas, fur coats, wig-wearing.. I mean, it’s all highly entertaining, and I also MUST give 50 his props on creativity, shock value, and promotion ability.

But isn’t all this supposed to boil down to who is the best rapper? Is hip-hop beef about hip-hop anymore? Or is it nowadays just who can virally spread their message of ridicule through the internet faster.. Or who owns, or doesn’t own, a Lambourghini…

Chuck D once said hip-hop was “CNN for black people”.

These days, it’s more like WWE.

Vibe Magazine

According to Gawker (via ByronCrawford via NicoleBitchie), Vibe Magazine may be in financial trouble.

This, of course, is not surprising in the grand scheme of things, economy, publishing biz, etc.

But a commenter on the Gawker story had a very interesting viewpoint.

Chartreuse says:

Here’s the deal.

The audience who would read VIBE are all on the internet reading sites like Allhiphop.com, worldstarhiphop.com, NecoleBitchie.com and the like.

Their online execution has been awful.

Well, that actually makes a lot of sense. We see others in the online hip-hop world discussing whether blogs/sites are preferred over magazines these days, and in general, advertising dollars continue to drain from print and heading online, which can quicken the demise of print properties (and hip-hop sites do seem to be increasing their viability, and advertisers seem to notice… Check NahRight’s recent Mickey D’s ad takeover!). Could this increase in e-street-cred that these sites and blogs are receiving help put the nail in the coffin for Vibe, The Source, XXL, and the like?