photo by Rhymefest
Rhymefest is dope. He’s a dope MC and performer. I saw him open for A Tribe Called Quest at HOB in Orlando a few years back. He rocked the crowd like he wasn’t supposed to. We were all there to see Tribe and Rhyme stole the show.
Quick background on Fest:
he wrote Jesus Walks for Kanye (Grammy Winner), dropped a slept on album called Blue Collar in 2006 on Mark Ronson’s Allido Records (single was Brand New) and has been a major force and voice in hip-hop for longer that you would believe.
Now he’s back and doing things on the Internet the way we like to see it. He just released a pay-what-you-want mixtape, Dangerous: 5-18 in honor of the release date of his next album, el che (actually dropping June 8th).
Bandcamp
To release the mixtape he didn’t go the all too easy but honestly stupid route of putting the .zip file on a sharing site like every other hip-hop artist does. Nope, Fest threw it up on Bandcamp, got himself a custom subdomain and hosted the tracks on his site. Fans can choose to cop the album for free, but they need to enter their email address and confirm it to download the 17 original tracks. Check the screenshot below:
Fest is building his list, segmenting it by location and purchase price and getting you free and original music and Bandcamp is doing all the work. Nice work.
With Twitter he is connecting with fans, chatting with them about subjects most rappers and artists stay way, away from. The questions, the interactions and the RT’s only add to his popularity on the service. The other thing I love is that while he does push out some of his music, he gives more than he takes.
In the post on not using Twitter like Myspace, I mentioned a comment from Chris Brogan where you look at your last 10 Tweets and see who and what they were about. 7 of the last 10 Tweets from Fest are engaging his audience. Check the shot below:
Most artists use Facebook to either copy over what they are saying on Twitter or really, leave it dormant. Not Fest. Here he is using the platform to connect with a different audience that the one that connects with him on Twitter. he gets the medium and in return, he is building his audience on this platform as well (29,000+). Check the shot below where he has wall posts about a contest for high school kids and his listening parties:
His Blog
Most artists plug themselves, or just post stale links to reviews or interviews that they did elsewhere. Fest uses his site to announce a Google Group for Independent Thinkers, hold debates, talk about show prep and more. Kudos for the effort man, blogging is tough work but it pays off. The only tips I could say would be in the WordPress structure, permalinks and SEO department.
Expanding His Reach To OPA
Using other sites expands the reach of this promotion. Today I caught wind of a guest post he wrote for DJ Booth. It was actually the 3rd part in a series. I speak about this all the time, but when you post on your site, you only get to reach your immediate audience and sometimes the trickle down effect from Google. Leveraging other people’s sites and audiences is huge, and here Rhymefest does it in an engaging way, that is way beyond just dropping another track.
In fact that is what he talks about in the article, Entitled DJ’s Are Creating Cheap Disposable Music.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately Rhymefest is working hard to expand his reach online and connect with his fans. He is building a database and creating tribes on multiple networks that are all distinct from each other. The engagement at each venue is different and tailored, while still being true to his brand. Even if he doesn’t notice it, he is building a business, one with window shoppers, fans and customers.
And these people are not going to sleep on “el che” when in drops this June.
What do you think of Rhymefest’s strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
-Greg
Tags: bandcamp, facebook, Music Marketing, rhymefest, twitter
Leave A Reply (5 comments So Far)
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Justin Boland
743 days ago
Man, this was A+ material, you knocked this shit out of the park. Great rundown here.
gregrollett
743 days ago
@Justin – thanks man, good to see you back over here. Keep me posted on all your stuff as I’d love to feature what you are up to as well.
Justin Boland
740 days ago
I was talking over this material with some of the artists on their roster and they immediately brought up a question: How big is the team behind this, and does Rhymefest have anything resembling a dayjob aside from his music career?
Everyone was psyched to see such a clear example of all this shit in action, with all moving parts working right. One point I brought up is that all this content creation is only a burden, or imposing, when you get the routine started. Once you start doing regular updates and planning ahead on your content, things take care of themselves and you start getting a nose for synergy — how to perform actions that accomplish multiple ends.
(I definitely see you doing this now with taking your personal career more into the open here on GYRS. That’s good content, keep going with it.)
Another major benefit of this approach: it forces the artist to start living a more interesting and meaningful life, even if it’s only in the name of getting better content. We should all have our own reality TV shows — at least it would make the f’ing small talk at parties a lot more interesting, right?
gregrollett
737 days ago
Thats a really good comment man. Honestly I am not sure about his team, but I would assume that most of it is Fest himself. The Tweets and blog posts at least. From there I would think he has a team to help him out.
You hit the biggest topic of discussion on the head at the end of the comment – you need to commit to this, set a schedule and make it routine. Blogging is hard ass work – not to mention blogging is not how many make their income, its simply a homebase to make connections, share thoughts and push out updates.
You need to get it through to the artists that the music is part 1. Once you get out of the studio its all about marketing. Look at the bigger artists – they just use bigger platforms like late night talk shows, MTV, etc. As an indie blogs, social networks and forums are those outlets. You gotta work.
Quiet Entertainer
731 days ago
I’m glad I came back to re-read this so I could get this continued discussion. Thanks. Yeah it is overwhelming just thinking about all of the dots you have to connect and the absolutely necessary lifestyle change you have to go through (for me) to get to this point.