Feature: Hip Hop music in a digital age

The wonders of the web seem to be making everything digital and making old media fight a tough battle, and music is no exception. Historically speaking, records were replaced by cassette, casstette was replaced by CD, and CD replaced by MP3s, and other digital formats.

I don't want to get into such technological innovations as there could well be an MP8 for all I know.

Hip Hop music, amongst others is also following a digital trend in order to be a leading force in the music industry. Contemporay rapper Mr Ozwald highlights this quite wonderfully, and paves a digital way for other artists to take advantage of the web like he did.

"With album sales dropping every year, I've decided to focus on digital distribution and release new music every month via iTunes and other online stores."

Elshwere in hip-hop, rapper Flo-Rida set a digital sales record with his smash single 'Low' last year selling nearly half a million copies in its first week of release making digital hip-hop sales at an all time high according to Billboard.

This trend is being supported by indie record labels like Amalgam Digital, which is an online hip-hop label who sell "exclusive digital-only albums."

Very effective strategies are being deployed by these digital labels.
They probably target lazy gits like myself as I dont really go out to shops like HMV to buy albums, and i buy or download music from the comfort of my home.

In the near future, record labels will probably be replaced by online labels as the need for record labels are decreasing, and the web is allowing more and more flexability.

For rappers or any artists to be recognised, they dont need to wait long hours in front of record label offices with demo CDs. They can put their music online easily, or put songs on Myspace which has seen the young American hip-hop phenom Soulja Boy being signed to a major record label.

In the UK, hip-hop radio 1Xtra has been the most successfull station out of the four new digital stations by the BBC with 313, 000 listeners per week. Not bad at all, as I am one of those listeners!

image source dopetracks