GetAtMe

In recent years there has been a burst in online marketers making online their new home and expertise (the opinions are as varied as a schizophrenic chef's menu... )  Everyone has the secret sauce.  

Online is bigger than the hustle although.  Online is the next communications engager for new potential buyers in their day to day arena on their phones and tablets.  Online is the new way that you can be with your potential audience daily in their engagement theater really look at it as more than a hustle, because its bigger than a hustle

The labels are only as powerful as your ability (or inability) to build a fanbase. Acts like Flo_Rida, IHeartMemphis, SageTheGemini, TWayne and TheWeekNd (yes he built Republic literally...) all have posted strong sales numbers most of the time performing better that established label artist. In today's environment the majors miss all the time and only big up their wins. The majors have become like the Wizard Of Oz pulling media levers behind a curtain. For real, there is no 12-25 core consumer (primarily female) that gives a f*cks what somebody at the labels care about. The buying itunes consumer is at least 5 weeks ahead of the labels promotion cycles and the buying public should be all that matters if you are in business. Really, they can't wait to buy hot new music or an app (that's the buying consumer...) If you are using music to validate yourself or a genre, then that's different. That's only producers (looking for a bag of money, free weed and cheap ass) or an artist looking for Rent To Own fame (who gets sticker shock when he gets the bill "I had to pay for all these hoes..." ). Build your fan base by (gigging) and get them tp spend the $1.00 (sh*t a homeless cat can get a buck, if your music is so hot then it should be a done deal. Unless you don't have friends, fans and the music is not hot). Its not that hard to upload an mp3 to cd baby or order a 100 cds. That's the real

Look I realize hiphop is entertainment (that’s not even an issue…), but recently a reader asked me “Well why do the sales matter anyway?”  That was amazing to me.  Why wouldn’t you want to know the sales (that’s when I realized that I may have become Don Quixote (from the Man from La Mancha) and now I spend most of my day fighting hiphop dragons.  The reason this reader felt that the sales numbers were irrelevant is because he’s aware that hiphop has become one big living lie.  I mean come on, we have ex correctional officers acting like mafia bosses, ex child tv stars acting ingenious thug villains, we’re telling people that streams are the same thing as sales (clearly a fugazzi play to fool investors into believing “oh no we haven’t f*cked up your money…) and we have one artist that is so irrelevant in the world of Madison Ave advertising, that they didn’t even hit him with a cease and dissest order when he blatantly infringed upon their copyright (“it wasn’t worth drawing attention to that kind of foolishness…”).  We now spend more time creating beefs than creating hit music.  How can hiphop really expect America or the world to take it seriously?  Artist now attack their exes for media attention and use online sites to steal beats and concepts and the hiphop PR people will say any lie for a check (“I gotta get that check folks…”).  Why has this happened? Because hiphop found it more feasible to invest in HIPHOP CON ARTIST than to invest in HIP HOP ARTIST (“whose gonna believe a con artist when he tells folks that we didn’t pay him…? #lsmh).

Radio on a regular are 6 months late on a record that’s over and never sold, why because someone Is silly enough to pay to get in the cut line to get on radio (and yes” it is still tricking if you got it…” folks just say that to make folks feel good about tricking.).  When I first saw CB4 many years ago, I would have never dreamed that this movie would become the blueprint for how we operate in hiphop today.  That’s MC Gusto would be beefing with all his new challengers through online PR firms and threads.  That the real Gusto wouldn’t realize that these folks were just using up not only his cash but also his street juice (and then dry snitch on him to go to jail or encourage (on the low) for some new and up and coming artist to “do what you have to do to get your spot… (even if it means you robbing and killing the current star as a way of creating a situation for them to rise and where the money owed to the current star is never paid out.  Is this what HipHop has become?  Really?  How did party music that was able to be so impactive in society become just one big financial ruse?  Was it a conspiracy?  Naw it was just some folks who were greedy and not as smart as they think they are constantly coming up with bad ideas and those bad ideas are about to make hiphop as an industry implode.  What Dionne Warrick and C Deloris Tucker couldn’t do, the HipHop Boula has done by creating creating a cancerous environrment in hiphop, and it’s gotta stop.

Look I’m not one to knock anyone’s hustle (I personally don’t count other folks pockets…) but some of this behavior is really bad and is an embarrassing eye for hiphop as an industry.  Hip hop and music has always had its share of snake oil salesmen (it came with the industry) but these folks today are really new and improved and some of the ideas are so bad, you can’t even call them criminal.  They are just bad.

I’m Reggie Redd and as I always say. “here at GetAtMe, It always about the music…”

#ItsAboutTheMusic

#GetAtME

This music stuff get’s sillier by the day. I mean it’s getting to the point that we really have to question if it’s really still a business. Every since we have experienced the closing of mall store in communities that sold music and have tried to rely on online sales, the foolishness seems to know no end.
Look sales figures event ticket sales are the only way to gauge value in the music business. Streams are not committed sales. A committed sale is when a fan reaches in their pocket or on their phone and purchase. That’s business. Rigging the sales numbers and hoping that a major corporation is stupid or too lazy to check your figures, is not business (see the difference).
So when folks tell major reporting agencies I’m not reporting my sales figures well that reeks of a con or( more so probably the case) poor sales numbers. It really looks like there is something that someone is hiding.
Look here’s the truth. An online sale is a licensing arrangement, not a record sale and the majors (by judges order) now are obligated to have 50/50 arrangement with artist (I’m sorry you management didn’t get the memo. It was only a major news story online…) so the labels have created this movement of dealing with the streaming situations even to the point of trying to make up a definition of a certain amount of streams are sales (now you know that’s just stupid...) A sale is a sale and a stream is a stream.
Look these guys at these companies really aren’t just that stupid so for us to continue to have hiphop be a viable business entity then we in hiphop have got to do better business and understand business better. Everything is not always a hustle and it s not always about the money (unless you’re broke or a lazy thinker…)
#ImJustSayin