By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.c0m

Tomorrow, the lovers in the audience can get a little birthday sex, even if their birthday is six months away. Romplr, the iPhone music application that lets you remix some of your favorite artist’s music is letting you get your hands on Jeremih’s ode to having it your way on your special day, “Birthday Sex.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Hip hop is big business. Everyone’s getting fat off of the proverbial teat that is hip hop. Despite all this money floating around, the genre is still underserved when it comes to equipment. Beatmakers have been forced to make lemonade out of lemons, having to adapt hardware and software to their needs. Thankfully, this will no longer be a problem thanks to the Beat Kangz.

The Beat Kangz is a three man production team that has earned countless awards for their stellar work producing tracks for countless independent and big name artists including The Roots and KRS-One. They also create beats for ad and media agencies. But aside from being music geniuses, the Kangz are huge techies. Read the rest of this entry »

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Once upon a time, people used to buy whole albums instead of cherry-picking singles and leaving the rest in limbo like so much musical flotsam. In those glory days, people not only brought albums for the music, but for the cool liner notes that came with it.  Whether it was cool art, bonus music, or some other effect to make the music experience that much more special. One such album was the late “King of Pop’s” Invincible which featured five different album covers.

Apple who has helped to put the music industry in a tailspin is hoping to give a much needed kick in the pants. The project, codenamed “Cocktail,” brings Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and EMI, four of the largest record labels together with Apple to create interactive bundles exclusive to full album purchases. These “booklets” will contain bonus artwork, photos, liner notes, and other content.

While this is a good look for music in general as it will encourage artists to return to a time when musicians worked to perfect their craft from the music to the liner and everything in between, the question remains can this model work for today’s music consumer. While we all love extra content, will it be enough to encourage people to invest in laying down their hard-earned cash for an entire album? For battle-tested artists like Prince, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, and Beyonce that have a loyal fan base this a great model since but for flash-in-the-pan ringtone artists, where the formula has been make a hot single and run, this could be a problem (which in the grand scheme of things could be the best thing that’s happened to the music industry in a long time, but that’s another post).

Sources have “Cocktail” releasing anytime from this September to sometime in 2010. Why the big time window? It’s been rumored that the project is set to release alongside the as of yet unconfirmed Apple tablet that’s had techies atwitter with excitment for the past week. Ultimately, “Cocktail” has the potential to change the way music lovers engage their music, a simpler time when the music was the focus. But without more details, it seems a little too early to hang the weight of a sagging music industry that has systematically done everything it could to dig itself into such a deep hole.

BlackWeb20.com covers website and application launches; culturally relevant Internet industry news; and mainstream Internet industry news from an African-American perspective.  They also analyze emerging web trends and how they apply to web properties that target African-Americans or African-American culture.

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

As the music industry works feverishly to discover a new business model that will repair its rapidly decaying orbit, the creative side of the business suffers. With less money being put into promotion and A&R, it’s become increasingly difficult for artists to be picked up and promoted effectively. As a result, up and coming artists are forced to use grassroots tactics of get their product in front of the right set of ears. In recent years, the Internet has replaced standing in front of a record label executive’s office, hoping to get lucky and get a demo into a famed starmaker’s hands. Nowadays, it’s all about the grind and making enough noise in the trenches to reach the corner offices belonging to music bigwigs.

Recent examples of sucessful of Internet noisemakers including the polarizing Soulja Boy and the world’s former most sought after free agent, Drake. The latest artist to step into the spotlight via the viral power of the Internet is Priscilla Renea. To quote the words of the late, great Notorious B.I.G., it was all a dream. The 18 year old built a rabid following through straight hustle, posting videos of herself singing covers of popular songs on YouTube. At the height of her YouTube assault she had posted 3oo videos and while she built up a healthy following through grassroots promotion it was her guerillla tactics that really got her noticed.

“I went and I searched and searched for the YouTube editor’s email. Then I pretended to be someone else and sent them an email. It was like, ‘yo, you need to check out this chick, she’s dope!’ (laughs) It worked and they put my video on the front page. That’s when I really started getting a lot of attention. There was a lot of self-promotion going on.”

The self-promotion will continue for the release of her upcoming album Jukebox set to release in October. The campaign definitely has some more juice behind it since she’s been signed to Capitol Records. But it’s more than promotion to Priscilla Renea. ” It’s not just a tool to promote my success, it’s also something I really enjoy. I like expressing myself. I like editing and posting the videos on YouTube. Now you’re going to get a lot of behind the scenes footage as well as the videos of the things I do with the label that’s all going on YouTube.” In addition to YouTube, Renea recently released an EP of three songs to whet fans’ appetites. Available on iTunes and Amazon, the EP includes the wildly popular single “Hello My Apple.”  She also has a new website (www.priscillareneamusic.com) where fans can catch up with Priscilla’s latest happenings.

In addition to her new site, fans can also connect with the artist via her twitter page (www.twitter.com/priscillarenea), where she likes to get a little more personal. “I definitely love being able to keep everyone in the loop of what’s going on. I guess it’s a little bit of both – what’s going in my life, letting fans feel like the know me on a personal level, but at the same time I’m keeping them informed.”

Clever promotion tactics aside, Priscilla Renea is the real deal. Her upcoming album promises to be a  “more organic” presentation of the quirky, heartfelt style her fans know and love.

BlackWeb20.com covers website and application launches; culturally relevant Internet industry news; and mainstream Internet industry news from an African-American perspective.  They also analyze emerging web trends and how they apply to web properties that target African-Americans or African-American culture.

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Popular music-streaming service Imeem is preparing to do battle with iTunes. According to TechCrunch, the popular free service has been testing out ways to open its own digital download store. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the service, listeners can access streaming music and videos for free. If they want to purchase the song to play on their MP3 players, users simply click on the download button and they can purchase the tune from either iTunes or Amazon MP3. The partnership with Apple and Amazon only nets imeem a measly 5% of the purchase via an affiliate fee, making it difficult for the service to be profitable, especially since they also have to fork out a pretty penny to the music labels for the ability to access artists’ music. Read the rest of this entry »