I know before you start throwing shade. Its cool to use datafile host if you an up and coming artist trying to get your name out there but when you established its not the best route. Lets look at the facts. Todays' game is not based on sales but your reach. If you have a reach like some of the biggest artists the brands and the promoters want to mess with you. The problem with Datafile Host is that it churns out the wrong numbers and artists start having a misconceived opinion of how great they are, but most importantly they share these numbers with promoters and brands. When the promoters or brands give them a shot they flop and then they think thats a reflection of the whole hip hop game unless its Cassper Nyovest,AKA or KO.When a new artist i.e. Nasty C or Emtee comes with real number which are less than the datafile host inflated numbers those same brands or promoters could shut them out cause the previous artists had bigger numbers from datafile host and still failed. In the long run the game loses. You might see an artist like Cassper Nyovest using Datafile Host but when you look at his social media numbers they also correspond so even if the Datafile Host numbers are wrong he has solid social media profile. If you have less than 40,000 people on all your social media platforms how do you explain 300,000 downloads? Think about it.
Some of the best music never got to our ears last year because the artists signed with a major label in the hopes that they would make things easier. Maybe 10 years ago and further this was correct but the market is changing. Today the best way to build a market is through accessibility and not exclusivity. A lot of the artists sign deals that wont allow them to create soundcloud or video files for their audio. This means that we cant sample the songs online to decide whether we like them, which eventually means no one will book the artists cause we dont know the songs. The artist will probably post an image on Instagram with a time when you can hear the song on a radio station but we all know that we get so much information daily that we probably wont remember that.Today our artists are reaching the world the labels need to start sampling iTunes for the world and not just South Africa. There a lot of established artists that cant be accessed in the world cause of their labels. This got to stay in 2015 oyeah and we now have the Onlife Store for non iTunes users a nice way to start 2016.
All these cats that are riding on the success of a hardworking artist need to stop. If the artist has worked hard on their craft you need to work as hard on yours. A lot of managers get caught up in the hype of the artist and become divas like the artists. The role of a manager is to stay centered and humble, all the things that the artists has an excuse not to be. In 2015 it was sometimes hard to distinguish who the artist was. Its dont matter how big or how small you are whenever you get a call and you ignore it or you dont diarise to return it you doing the artist an injustice. The truth is everyone wants the artists and you just the channel to him. If you making the journey a nightmare in the long run the artist will suffer. Unless he fires you in 2016.
Lets get this out the way as a site we support the culture and that means any artist that we reach out to and gives us love is automatically put on the site. We dont have any agendas nor do we hold any grudges with anybody so all these trolls that keep posting how we hate AKA and love Cassper Nyovest or vice versa need to stop. This post is for all you instigators that see an AKA post and want to bring up Cassper or see a Cassper post and want to bring up AKA. Follow who you want and always ask yourself if the culture is winning or not. The fact that AKA has fans that dont like Cassper Nyovest and vice versa means that the culture has variety. In other words its winning therefore stop all the instigating you aren't getting anything from that. It was ok in 2015 but lets move on please.
I know a lot of people send us songs or just generally post up songs online. Please ask yourself whether you care for the craft of creation not hip hop......creation and then whenever you make a song check whether you've applied that care. I sometimes listen to music and all I hear are guys who just want to be like the guys who care about the craft. Please guys in 2016 either find what makes you special and stop trying to give us a "special" of whats already claimed.
I think thats enough venting for the year lets have a blast.
