D-Pryde, D-Marketing

The music industry is ever evolving and in the more recent years has transformed into a digital download contest. Even more specifically, the hip-hop industry has become a playground for digital download and free content. With the advent of websites such as djbooth.net, hotnewhiphop.com, worldstarhiphop.com and hiphopisdream.com, music is available at the click of a button. At the same time hip hop music is becoming easy to homebrew, aka throw together in your college dorm room, and therefore, the market is becoming heavily saturated. Every day thousands of mix tapes are uploaded to Datpiff.com and millions of songs are uploaded to limelinx.com for illegal download. With so much music available at the click of a button it seems almost impossible for an emerging artist to make his mark in this digital congestion, right?

Well, recently the industry has seen several individuals step into the rap game without label support and mostly due to their success using digital marketing. To learn more about how this is done I will introduce this week’s fresh download candidate: D’Pryde. This 17 year old Canadian rapper/songwriter/producer just recently released his first mix tape titled Mars and collected over 150,000 downloads in the first three days. The question is how did this teenager create a buzz large enough to reach these kind of numbers and the answer is digital presence. Over two years ago D’Pryde set up his YouTube Channel and started doing ‘freeverses’ over popular songs, filming them and uploading them to his page. One year later D’Pryde had uploaded 150 videos amassing over 30 million views. Last summer on July 14^th, 2010 D’Pryde got a call from hip hop commoner Dr. Suss One and was signed to his label Mars Music.

With the help of Dr. Suss One and several other experts D’Pryde was put on track to grow a large fan base. Over the next few months the team focused on placing ads, like the one seen below, all over popular hip hop websites and social media blogs.

Soon enough D’Prydes YouTube channel had reached over 50 million views and he has created a fan base well over 500,000 people. In a recent interview with Channel APA D’Pryde expresses how he thanks all of his fans for viewing his material online and contributes his success to his video postings. Head over to this LINK and check out the Mars mix tape, in the mean time enjoy D’Prydes newest song titled "No Sleep".