I
was born in an era when going Gold was
a very serious accomplishment for a hip-hop
artist. Groups and solo artists based
milestones of their careers by receiving
a gold plaque. There is something about
having that gold edition piece of vinyl
on your wall and at your record labels
office. The evolution of hip-hop as a
genre has totally blown the sales plan
out of the water.
As the marketability and the worldwide
acceptance of this particular music form
have grown, so has sales but in this rare
particular instance it has almost grown
exponentially. With artists becoming more
prominent on MTV and the emergence of
BET, at that time, there record sales
really started to pick up we also had
the all video pay for play entity known
as The BOX. With the addition of the artists
that you were bouncing your head to being
visible on the TV and not just heard on
the radio, parties etc. Finally the almighty
consumer could associate the face with
the voice, which also increased the sales
of the albums.
In the 90's you see commercial mainstays
and new emerging stars in hip hop reach
Platinum status a whole lot easier than
in previous years. The 90's had such Platinum
efforts from such artists as Dr. Dre,
Snoop, Biggie and The Wu Tang Clan. This
new level of success raised the stakes
in the game we all know and love. The
money that artists were receiving increased
due to marketability of the genre. Def
Jam, DeathRow and BadBoy.... Loud too
were some of the biggest owners of high-powered
rosters. These labels were striving to
push the envelope.
Now it is the new millennium and every
label has at least one artist who has
went Platinum on the rosters. But due
to the fact of the leaps and bounds that
technology has made in the last 10 to
15 years, we have seen smaller labels
whose artists receive a larger portion
of profit achieve a high level of success.
Now a very important area of music is
the underground success of many "mainstream
artists", if you can sell 300,000
out of your trunk there is only a minimal
difference in the level of profit for
the artist. The technology has also posed
a problem for the labels. File sharing
has dipped into the pockets of these big
record labels. Artists still go Platinum
and Gold but the labels are not making
as much as they should. The growing pressure
from all of the file trading online has
all of the majors making contengency plans
to avert the demise of the record industry
as we all know it. There will be outlets
to burn a artists album's or just record
single songs. With this imposing force
from all this piracy the reaction to counteract
that is to sell way more records so the
majors can still exploit the most profit
that they can out of the artists. So now
the new level of success is having is
Diamond. Now emcees are pushing there
art to a level where they can sell 10
million units. Every five years we attain
a higher goal, so we must continue to
watch are culture grow and succeed. Pretty
soon we will have emcees on the senate.
If you have any questions, comments or
suggestions email me at: bob@geoclan.com
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