Billboard & PaidContent Launch Digital Music Trade Blog

Billboard PostPlay is a new joint venture from Billboard and PaidContent.org directed by Rafat Ali, editor of PaidContent.org and one of the leading figures in the creation of trade blogs.  The press release describes it as a "blog covering the latest news, trends, analysis and economics of the digital music industry" and, given Ali's track record with PaidContent.org and MocoNews.net, it won't be a toy.

Ali posts briefly about this new trade blog.  I don't want to overstate my response, but this development might be the biggest to date in the world of music blogging.  Although Weblogs, Inc. has a Digital Music trade blog, authored by Brad Hill, it often seems more oriented to the prosumer than the industry.

Hill covers the appropriate topics, but it's hard to give him industry cred when he mispells Jay-Z as Jay-Zee and describes the Grey Album as "Jay-Zee's masterpiece" rather than correctly attributing it to Danger Mouse who remixed Jay-Z's Black Album to create one of the most widely covered events in the recent history of music.  And, though I understand his generally dismissive attitude regarding industry revenue forecasts by research firms, it often seems like he overlooks the useful research on which they're based as well as their impact on industry activities.

Billboard PostPlay has an XML feed and will be making an email newsletter available soon.  The press release describes it as a "daily must-read site" but that's almost an understatement for people concerned with the business of digital music or the music industry more generally.  In addition to providing news and analysis, PostPlay will cover industry conferences, a much needed service.  Billboard's choice of PaidContent.org as a partner in this endeavor also indicates some serious savvy about entry into weblogging on their part.

[Disclaimer:  Any comments I make about Weblogs Inc. are colored by the fact that I've applied three times proposing hip hop or dance related blogs (dance is one of my primary areas of expertise) without getting the courtesy of even a form email turning me down.  Yes, I'm oversensitive, but there you have it.]

Quick Takes

In the Billboard 200 album charts, The Game's The Documentary dropped to no. 4, Kidz Bop Kids' Kidz Bop 7 debuted at no. 7, Eminem's Encore remains at no. 8, Tru's Truth enters at no. 54 and Bone Brothers enters at no. 60.

The soundtrack for XXX: State of the Union, due April 19 from Jive, is rapcentric and will include a cover of PE's Fight The Power from Korn and Xzibit and a new song from Ice Cube, Anybody Seen the Po-Po.

Pimp My Ride's Mad Mike demo'd a custom Chrysler at a gathering of Intel Developers in San Francisco (online video).

The Globe and Mail profiles Outkast's Andre Benjamin regarding his role in Be Cool. His character is named Dabu, a name invented by Cedric the Entertainer in response to director F. Gary Gray's offer of $200 for creating the "most ghetto" name.

Nas recently complained about "CB4 gangstas making the rap game look bad" but, apparently, it's the real gangstas that are the problem right now. In an odd business note, Nas says his next album will be called NASDAQ Dow Jones with a possible release date in the summer.

Nas is also working on a novel that will utilize a character from his recent album, Street's Disciple, and is gearing up for a UK tour later this month.

Hip Hop and Controversy in New Zealand

At a financially troubled educational institute in New Zealand, a student group was given $3500 to participate in a hip hop dance competition in exchange for recruiting students to boost enrollment and gain as much as $348,000 in additional public funds. Or it could have been a hip hop dance group in a more general competition, in any case, the outing is ambiguously described as a "school hip hop trip." Maybe they just listened to hip hop music on the ride over.

This controversy emerges as an NZ jobs program that spent $445,000 and got jobs for four people is under investigation after initially raising attention for funding a $26,000 tour to study hip hop.

I've been getting the impression that hip hop is pretty big in New Zealand and Davey D. recently commented, after Monday's shooting, that he was "getting calls about this from everywhere, even New Zealand." Perhaps that's not as surprising as it sounds. Sitemeter's reading of the time zones from which people view my site shows NZ's time zone as the 4th busiest after, in descending order, the U.S.'s East Coast, the West Coast and Central Standard which includes Texas and Illinois. So why don't I get any mail from New Zealanders?

Try this Google News search for more on hip hop in New Zealand.

[Note: All figures in NZ dollars.]