marketing for rappers? – review of bklynstickup.com

Something, that a lot of my readers probably don’t know about me, is  that I USED to make music ALL the time. I still do, but just not as much cuz I’m crazy busy with my other businesses.

Anyway, I’ve made all kinds of music before – hip hop, rap, r&b, house, electro, ambient, just to name a few.  I got some 400 beats in the vault…insane! But mostly hip hop and rap beats.

I started this back in 1997 just as a hobby and it just vibed with me so I stuck with it and met some interesting people along the way. My mom and dad both have a passion for music and always used to play Indian instruments and sing in the house.

Back in the day, I remember recording tracks through my sound blaster pro with a microphone and some beats I used to make in ModPlug and Fruity Loops.

And then eventually to Reason, Cubase & Logic. That was the birth of my first company, DigiSpace Records, my record label.

Along the way, I’ve upgraded my equipment too – Tascam FW 1884, Presonus PreAmp, Baby Blue Microphone, Alesis Monitors, and a Roland Fantom X6.  Just recently got a AKAI beat machine too, so been playing with that a lot!

My original record labels website is actually still up and located @ DigiSpace Records. Probably doesn’t work the way it used to, but it used to be ALL working back in the day.  It was SICK. We dropped an album in 2005 and put it up on iTunes, Amazon, and everywhere we could. I used all types of internet marketing tactics to get rankings – post on others blog comments, forum posts, and email marketing with the 3K list I had from this site.  I hired people from Craigslist to be “free interns” who would work for a record label and fill out a spreadsheet on which forums they joined, what they posted, and then told them to post about our album in their posts. LOL.  It was great back in the day just thinking of random ways to promote the album.  I did a ton of other things as well, some of it worked and some of it didn’t.  This was back in the beginning of my internet marketing days.

The album was produced by me, with beats by some of my producer crew back then, and the first hip hop “artist” I ever worked with was Danse Daimons from Brooklyn. The problem with our first album, “Take it How You Want It”, was the guy who mastered the album ended up screwing it up before it went into production and it sounded like shit when it came out on CD (not horrible, but not clean).  Anyway, Danse Daimons new website is BklynStickup.com.  Keep in mind kids, the content at BklynStickup.com is explicit. So be CAREFUL. haha! I met him out in Long Island one day at Adelphi University. Since then we’ve become good friends and don’t really work on music much anymore, but we still share mad ideas and shit with each other.  I always try to help out old friends become successful with their businesses and I realize he’s been doing this for more than 10 years now.  He’s hungry and has moved up a LOT in the industry and is literally about to BLOW UP.  (watch for him!) Danse Daimons is hands down the BEST rapper out right now in my opinion.

Recently Danse (Kevin) and I were talking and I was telling him how the whole world is changing and the music industry seems to be following this model, but going too slow. Local businesses are starting to see success, small communities and groups are starting to form around them, and even on the internet – new communities are formed around great music.  It’s about building that brand and having that following online.  The music industry is just fake, you hear the same top 100 songs all day long on the radio and that’s it.  Almost every where else in the WORLD, the top 10 changes every two weeks.

So as we were talking, I mentioned to him that he has to build a following online. He has to build a REAL business with what he’s got.  Register a real LLC, get an assistant to book shows and meetings (perception is reality), and make sure all his shows and expenses are put on the books.  They got a pretty good t-shirt line going for them and they can throw all this on the books now.

Like I said before – it’s not about being “hood” and being “ghetto” anymore.  It’s about these record labels seeing that you can carry your own weight, have a rabid following and can be successful even without the music labels.  They  go around looking for the best “MySpace Rapper” or “YouTube Rapper”.   When they do find someone, they exploit that person and turn them into “ringtone rappers”.

So I told Kevin to take a different approach.  I told him he has to build a huge following first and go independent. Make the labels want YOU.  If his marketing on BklynStickup.com was better he could destroy the industry. The music is solid, the lyrics are gold, and the movement is huge. It’s something that not a lot of these guys are doing.  Anyone can have a label, have good music, and get heard.  But to build a real business and a following, you have to do it the right way.

So here it goes – Danse, Busy, Chicago, and the whole BklynStickup squad. I see you. TAKE THIS AND IMPLEMENT IT!

Everyone else – the review and tactics I reveal below can be used for anyone’s website/blog or industry.  What I am trying to do here is combine some direct response marketing with new and fresh rap music.  Interesting & Different approach, but I guarantee it will work.

ON THE HOME PAGE:

1. Put an email optin form on the main page next to the video. It should say something like “enter your name and email address and we’ll give you more free music”. You can even make a story out of it.  Show half the video, then cut it with a needle on record sound, and then have Danse saying, “You know what man? You can’t even watch this whole video right now. Why? Put in your name and email address to the right and find out. I’ll tell you what the record execs don’t want you to know.” On the inside, he can mention that the record execs don’t want us out for blah blah reason. Playing along the lines of the “anti-guru” style marketing.  The classic “Us vs. Them” plotline. People love that conflict and gossip angle.
2. Get rid of the MySpace, YouTube links on the main page. Why are you taking people away from the site? You want them to take one of two actions – get them to your blog or get their email address and then take them to the blog.
3. Get rid of the “Freshtillian Agenda” banner on the front page.  (I know you want it up there Busy, but take that shit off)
4. Keep the “Click Here to Enter” button.
5. I would consider changing the video on the home page.  I mean “This is for my Ni@@az” is a DOPE track, but you are not attracting all crowds.  You have to pick a song that ALL demographics would like.  Maybe a hood club joint.

ON THE BLOG:

1. Make the header smaller.  I know y’all wanna show your pretty faces, but it takes up almost the whole damn screen.
2. Enable Permalinks and install SEO plugins. (I can show ya how to do this)
3. Put posts into proper categories – half of them are in “Uncategorized”
4. Use tags for ALL your posts! This is HUGE for SEO.
5. Put an Optin Form in the sidebar and tell them they can download more tracks this way. You can even use the “plotline” for this optin form.
6. Get your tracks off ZShare! WHY??? Host them yourself. Again, never let people LEAVE your site. Again, you can make them put in their email address and then let them download your tracks. AND put it “above the fold”.
7. In the Music section, your songs aren’t linked to the actual song!  This makes it extremely hard for people to download anything.
8. In the Merchandise section, have pictures of just the shirts by themselves. I mean it’s cool to show all your pretty mugs, but seriously, no one wants to see you look all hard with your shirts on.  Especially you Busy – look at your grill man. Take pictures of the shirts against white backgrounds, and have them paypal you money immediately.  This CAN be the biggest part of your business and your website, so make it look professional. I would get more girls and some guys to model the shirts.  But not ALL people just modeling.
9. Use a better picture for the Bio section.
10. Over all, make the text bigger on all these pages.  Use size 14.
11. All your categories and sections on top seem to be going to static pages with no Page Titles, meta tags or anything.  Why not just use what Wordpress gives you.  This is hurting your rankings REAL bad and making it hard to follow on your site.
12. Put links to your YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and all Web 2.0 stuff on the sidebar.
13. The Sidebar disappears on the other sections of the website.
14. Use the Socialize plugin so that all our readers can share your content.
15. Get Feedburner and use it with Aweber.

Overall, I would think all of the above will help Bklyn Stickup get started on their online journey.  There was an an old website we started www.dabreakfastklub.com – see how the first thing I wanted on the sidebar was their email address?! It makes sense!

The old saying goes “The money is in the list.” Which is absolutely true. So make sure you are collecting email addresses and following up with your fans ALL THE TIME.

I wrote this up pretty quickly, and there are more changes that can be made to this site to make it even better. But this is a GREAT start for you all to get going.

Watch for Part 2 of this case study on how we’re doing.

Leave some comments on this one…I think we can provide some valuable feedback to these dudes!

Tagged as: bklyn stickup, brooklyn stickup, digispace records, hip hop, hip hop marketing, indepedent record label, rap, rap marketing