DJ Drama: Today's Mixtape Game & Slipping Rap Sales
The NY Times' Jeff Leeds got some interesting quotes about the state of the mixtape game but, due to the article's brevity and insistence on the "he said, she said" approach to so-called balanced journalism, it doesn't really go anywhere. Maybe he'll get the chance to stretch out another time.
DJ Drama on making Gangsta Grillz legal:
Since the CD is chock-full of authorized appearances by rap stars ranging from Young Jeezy to OutKast to Diddy, it could be completed only after a flurry of legal paperwork.
"It's difficult, and the process is tedious and strenuous, but it's just something you have to go through," DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyree Simmons, said in an interview this week.
On the industry's attempts to mimic the mixtape phenomenon:
Now, Mr. Simmons and others argue, the industry's crackdown on unlicensed mixes has backfired by quieting buzz and contributing to a sharp slide in rap sales...the big labels' own attempts to recreate the fast and loose feel of mixtapes in an authorized product have stumbled...
Universal released three mixtape-style compilations under the brand "Lethal Squad." But despite an inexpensive price tag ($5 to $6) intended to help them compete alongside unlicensed compilations, the albums, featuring sanctioned remixes by less prominent D.J.'s, have together sold only about 20,000 copies so far...
Mr. Simmons called Universal's effort "a day too late," adding, "If they were going to try to do that, why not do it with the powers that be in the mixtape game?"
Universal earlier this year did undertake an effort to create a licensing regime that would allow a select group of D.J.'s to incorporate songs from its catalog into their mixtapes...but the plans foundered amid debate over several issues, including how the system would handle required payments to music publishers and whether it could include Universal songs that contained samples from earlier recordings.
Has the mixtape crackdown affected rap sales?
[DJ Drama] draws a connection between the apparent decline in the mixtape circuit and this year's sharp drop in rap sales — more than 20 percent, far more than the 15 percent slide in album sales over all.
It "ain't no coincidence," he said. "Look at the last four or five years of hip-hop, and those who've really built names for themselves in the game, the majority of it comes from mixtapes, period. Without that, you don't have any movements."
Other people have other opinions. Like discussions of filesharing, a deeper investigation would clear up some misconceptions but lead to arguments over conflicting pieces of data that will never be resolved, in part, because far too many of the participants are untrustworthy.
But we can probably say these things:
Making a legal mixtape ends up being as much or more trouble than making a legal album so that removes most of the advantages of a mixtape.
At least one major label attempt to control the phenomenon by releasing legal mixtapes from relatively unknown djs failed.
[Eskay helped kill that one. Plus, the fact that they tried to turn a disruptive innovation into a sustaining innovation without having a clue as to what was going on doomed their efforts to failure.]
The major labels' own systems for protecting and monetizing their intellectual property made it impossible for them to come up with a workable system to allow mixtapes to function without excessive reams of paperwork.
The question of whether or not the mixtape crackdown negatively affected rap cd sales is probably unresolvable. Actual sales are a result of a complex rather than complicated process therefore attempting to prove a causal connection between one factor in that drop while separating the effects of other factors from one's analysis leads to faulty assumptions based on an incomplete picture.
ProHipHop's Executive Summary:
A quick analysis of the above post reveals that the concepts of "music industry" and "failure" are closely tied both subjectively and objectively therefore suggesting that the major labels are doomed.
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