Celebrity Blog Sites Give Fans A Look In

Example of a celebrity blog *Contains Brief Expletive Language*



Celebrities are using new tactics to give fans a look in. They are now using blogs, many of them being videos of there everyday life. This gives fan an extra connection with whoever they are following and almost lets them get to know the person. It lets the fan know how they are feeling and what they are doing at the moment. Rapper Joe Budden as seen above uses his website JoeBuddenTV to give fans a look at his everyday life. Many of the videos are very comical in that Joe does most of the videotaping. Athletes such as Micheal Beasley and producer Sean "Puffy' Combs are also known to heavily blog. Blogs just like twitter or facebook is a way of social networking. Joe Budden especially has found a following on his website where there are many forums made talking about the site. It is another smart marketing move on the part of the artist or athlete or whoever. These blogs are going to cause traffic to there name and to there site. If something controversial goes on on the site immediately whoever it was there name will be in the news. Just as the Joe Budden vs Method Man feud started over a blog on Joes site. I do think it is deeper than a marketing scheme though. I think celebrities are just realizing that people are very interested in there everyday lives. I think its great enertainment and i enjoy the blogs.

Will Record Sales Ever Go Back Up?

I was just reading an article about this weeks nielson soundscan sales. I found it amazing that an artist who was once so well liked and popular could come in this week with less than 10,000 copies sold. Fat Joe whos new album Jealous Ones Still Envy II dropped last week selling upwards of 8,300 copies which is horendous for an artist on a major label(Joe distributes his music on a major). Those sales may not even be sufficient for an artist who is on a strictly independant label. This is a guy who has gone platinum several times and you come to wonder if it is the material he is putting out or if the music buisness is in a state of emergency. I feel like the main problem is the heavy pirating of music over the internet. The record for highest 1st week sale for an album was in 2000 with Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP which sold 1.7 million its first week. I dont think we will ever see someone break this record. Music sales have gone down drastically over the last several years and labels are doing whatever they can to get people to buy albums. Labels are including special offers in with the album to make you want to buy it. It is just not seeming to work because artists just arent selling. Even Green Day who is nationally known and well recieved only went platinum with there latest record(they previously have gone double and triple platinum).I personally have begun buying albums again recently but i fell into the same category as everyone else for a long time. We really need to think about how the artists put so much work into there album for people to steal it. However it has been made so easy, that to buy an album that you can just download for free almost seems ridiculous. Soon enough i think everything is going to be made digitally since almost no one minus maybe Eminem, Jay-Z, and Green Day are selling anymore. This upsets me being such a music fan.

Twitter Causing Feuds Between Artists?

When i first read the article i thought to myself wow look at a another marketing ploy by the part of a musical artist. Think about it twitter is probably one of the biggest social networks if not the biggest out there. Now for a little background on the situation 50 cent has always been known to feud with New York artists and throw shots at them in his music. Last weekend he had a concert in which he invited many New York rappers including a few he once feuded with to perform and join the festivities. He called the concert the Thisis50fest to help promote his website thisis50.com Rapper Fabolous who is also from New York was not at the concert and seemed to take some offense. He released several tweets talking about the fact that 50 helped bring the city down not unite it. Now this just annoys me because Fabs album just came out this is an obvious ploy to get his name out there. 50 didnt say anything about him and never has and while he may be right 50 has been out of line with some of his feuds i think it was dumb to do this. However this just shows the power twitter now has on so many people. The social network has now started a rap feud in which may increase album sales. Twitter is really becoming the fastest spread of news, there are things posted on twitter before they reach the news. An example of this would be mike beasleys post in which he threatened to kill himself. Twitter has spread so fast and all it is doing is making money for itself and the celebrities that use it. I still feel like Fab is out of line but i guess it is just his opinion. I never was a big fan of Fab and his latest cd was trash to me but that besides the fact.

Eminem Vs Mariah Ploy For Both Sides To Sell Records?

This article is a few months old but brought to mind some good points. Anyone who follows hip hop music knows the constant feuds that go on in the art form. Some are real feuds and some are well known to be marketing ploys by the artist and the label to sell records. For instance the Jay-Z vs. Nas beef was never going to get violent both of them had albums coming out and they used there marquee names to help them get fans to go out and buy the album. By now almost everyone has heard about the ongoing feud between singer Mariah Carey and rapper Eminem. Now to me this is a prime example of a man who owns his own record label(Eminem owns Shady Records) using this feud to help sell an album, and Carey as well. The whole feud started with a song off Eminems new album Relapse which took shots at both Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey. Shady has done this countless times on previous albums and this may be why he is the most successful selling rapper of the last decade. Now on the other hand this may have helped Carey too. She used her song Obsessed as a response to Eminem and it definitely got people wanting to here her new album. If this was a real rap feud Nick Cannon would have had to have done more after the horrible though kind of comical things Eminem said about her. The latest song "The Warning" was included in the article above, listen at your own discretion its very explicit. So in my opinion both Eminem and Mariah Carey should thank each other for the excellent publicity. Shadys album sold over 2 million copy's since its release in May of 2009 and Mariahs album just came out last week but is expected to do very well. Once again a prime example of record companys using feuds to help artists sell records in a time where buying cds is a thing of the past. Its sad but its true, well i still buy cds every once in a while if that makes things any better. But anyway what do you guys think was this just a ploy to sell records or do u think Eminem and Mariahs feud has a deeper meaning?

Record Labels Going Digital Good Thing Or Bad Thing?

I just finished reading an article about a record label E1 Music(Once known as Koch Records) teaming up with the independant digital label Amalgam Digital. The article brought to mind the idea that maybe with the teaming up of labels one day all labels will become digitalized. The fact that we will no longer be able to go to a store and buy the physical copy of someones album bothers me a little. I have always been into buying albums. I still buy albums to this day, i just like to have the physical copy with the liner notes etc. It seems as though with the growing technology soon enough maybe even within the next 10 years music will be pretty much all digitalzed. The rapper Joe Budden who is seen above in the A.D. entertainment t shirt is signed to Amalgam Digital. I actually bought my first digital album a few months ago his new album which was only available digitally. I met Budden at a signing in Smithtown last Febuary in which his 2nd album Padded Room was available in physical copy. However soon enough artists on that label and probably every label at some point with the joint ventures will be digitalzied completely. Its crazy to me how far technology has come from records and Walkman to having music only distributed over the internet. Well my opinion on the matter is i dont agree with digital music at all. Its just my opinion but i have always wanted to have the physical product of the album. I guess this is an easy way for the labels to make money(albums are around 5 dollars or so less digitally) but i just don't see it being a good thing. On the other hand with all the lazy people in the world i guess this could increase record sales in that it is cheaper and can be purchased with the click of a button.