The Dream Has the Bad Chick and The Dream Job!

The Dreams was recently appointed EVP of Island Def Jam, which was Jermain Dupri's position. Now Dream is set... he has the bad ass chick, and now a powerhouse job, as he makes millions with his music. What else can you ask for???

Check out his official statement...

" I wanna Thank everyone at Island Records/Def Jam for their faith in me and making me Executive Vice President of Island Records. Thank you to my team. my manager Mark Stewart & my attorney Aaron Rosenberg for getting this 1st step of a goal accomplished. Thanks to Judy. Thank you to my partner Tricky Stewart and the RadioKilla & RedZone Staff. LA Reid, Karen Kwak, Steve Bartels, Joe Barino Steve Gotlieb and Thank you, Universal Chairman, Doug Morris.

I look forward to the challenge of rebuilding music for not only Island Records, But for Universal Records as a whole. Today I’m humbled and blessed. Oh yeah thank you Christina for your wonderful belief in me i love you! also i want to thank the entire Nash family and Milian family for the Super Support you Give! This doesn’t mean i have extra money it means i have extra bills "

Da Kid Daytona Shoots video with Bun B

The Kid Daytona & Bun B - Air Born (Behind The Scenes, Music Video Shoot) from The Kid Daytona on Vimeo.

I had to post this joint cause I had the pleasure of pollying with Daytona and he really understands the fundamentals of having a strong online campaign. We are in the mist of putting a good situation in place so we can work together (www.industrysalternative.com), but one thing you must know about the homie is that his grind is tremendous. He doesn't just sit back and let the fact that he's consigned by all the Hot 97 DJs get to his head, the boy has a lot of hustle. This joint is also a dope track. Look out for this dude, cause he is coming right around the corner!

Digital Smash: Drake, Eminem, Kanye, Lil Wayne Hit Digital Retailers!

A collaboration featuring Weezy, Drake, Kanye and Em is dropping all digital retailer August 28th. The joint is off this Lebron James documentary that is coming out.

Check out excerpt from Thatshiphop.com

"The film recounts LeBron’s rise to NBA greatness from his humble beginnings ballin’ at a Salvation Army gym in inner-city Akron, Ohio. Filmmaker Kris Belman spent eight years putting this movie together and included never-before-seen footage including home movies and locker room meetings. More Than A Game will fast-break into the multiplexes on October 2".

Good look for young Mula baby! It's kind of crazy that Drake has only been on the established rap scene for months, but yet he is making tracks with the best in the business!

The Terminator is going to Twitter

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is heading to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco today to do a live streaming webchat with co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Oddly, Twitter hasn’t posted about it on its blog, but much of the company is atwitter (see what I did there) over the arrival. And so is the Governor, who tweets, “If you want to send in questions for my webchat at twitter hq with @ev and @biz, now is the time. You snooze, you lose.”

So what’s the purpose behind the Governor’s visit and the webcast? Well, Schwarzenegger has just launched a new Twitter-based site for California, MyIdea4CA.com. Yes, he’s using the social network to crowd-source ideas for how to run the state.

More at Techcrunch

Hip Hop Albums Sales and Reviews

Fabolous only moved 200,000? Damn that's not even gold! Check out album sales recap courtesy of Hiphopdx

Fabolous approaches 200,000 units with Loso's Way as he slid a mere three spots to #19. As Fab descended, the Black Eyed Peas [click to read] and The E.N.D. still remained in the Top 5, behind George Strait, Reba McEntire, Kings Of Leon and '90s rockers Third Eye Blind. Next week, BEP may be the second Hip Hop outfit in 2009 to reach the million mark, after label-mate Eminem. Maxwell's Black Summer's Night remained popped out of the Top 10 for the first time, still sitting comfortably at #11.

The lone new release in the urban sector to crack the Top 25 was Sean Paul's Imperial Blaze. Surprising to some, the platinum Dancehall sensation did not debut in the Top 10, selling just under 30,000 units. Eminem's Relapse [click to read] fell one spot to #20. The Aftermath effort is still promised to be the first, as 50 Cent's Before I Self Destruct and Dr. Dre's Detox are on deck respectively.



* please note: figures below approximated to nearest thousandeth.

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)
Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total
5
Black Eyed Peas
The E.N.D.
41,000
958,000
11
Maxwell
Black Summer's Night
30,000
661,000
12
Sean Paul
Imperial Blaze
28,000
29,000
19
Fabolous
Loso's Way
18,000
178,000
22
Eminem
Relapse
18,000
1,380,000

Slaughterhouse fell nearly 50 spots with their self-titled album. The album sales were a major discussion topic to industry insiders last week, as the group has been a top draw online through the blog community. E1's other new artist Dorrough slid to #85. Dorrough Music comes with help from Tum Tum, Lil Flip and other respected Texas rappers. Both E1 artists are at 25,000 units sold overall.

Twista's Category F5 crossed the 100,000 mark, after a month on the charts. The Chicago veteran's album has proven to be one of the bigger comebacks of 2009 commercially and critically.

T.I. finally certified double-platinum status of his 2008 album Paper Trail. This achievement had been teased on the charts the last two weeks, but the now-incarcerated rapper affirms his super-stardom in troubling economic times for the music industry.
Maino hung on in the Top 200, still a few paces short of 50,000 units sold of his If Tomorrow Comes... [click to read]. The Atlantic Records rapper has found a great deal of radio success despite album troubles.

Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total
61
Twista Category F5
7,600
104,000
70
Slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse
6,500
25,000
85
Dorrough
Dorrough Music
5,300
25,000
150
T.I.
Paper Trail
2,900
2,003,000
200
Maino
If Tomorrow Comes...
2,200
47,000

Get Your Twitter Game Up: Twitter Tracking URLs.

How many people wonder why, whenever you type in a URL in Twitter it comes up as bit.ly in the URL? Well this may be old news to some, but Twitter uses different variables to track URLs. Every URL you put up is attempting to be tracked by twitter. Although they have not quite figured out a way to come up with a 100 percent accurate way to track it.

Check out an article I stumbled upon on techcrunch (Get Your Twitter Knowledge up people)

Whether this was just a test or a preview of what’s to come, it suggests that Twitter wants to track all the links people click on the site, which is something you’d think it was doing already. The way that Twitter was doing the redirects was a bit clumsy. You actually ended up being redirected twice. First by the original URL shortener like bit.ly or ow.ly, and then by Twitter itself. While it only seemed to be happening on Twitter.com itself, the redirects worked for any short link including bit.ly, Tinyurl, ow.ly, and so on.

Why would Twitter be tracking links all of a sudden? It’s all about the passed links. First of all, those links are a treasure trove of data. By seeing which links get shared and clicked on the most, Twitter can tell where it is sending the most traffic, who is sending the most traffic, the most popular tweets, the most influential users, and more. All of this data would come in handy for Twitter’s planned analytics service it wants to roll out to business customers.

They can do a whole lot more too. First of all, they won’t be relying so much on bit.ly for click data on short links, even though bit.ly remains the default URL shortener on Twitter, and thus the biggest one, for now. With it’s own data, Twitter can move into bit.ly’s backyard and start showing the most popular links and what is being shared right across Twitter. In addition to ternding topics, it coudl also show trending links. More

New Blog Topic: Facebook Tweaks!

Moving forward, you are going to see more posts about online media and social media on this blog. I had to take some time away from my blog to think about the info I really want to distribute to the world. Being that I have my company's website www.industrysalternative.com which is all about using various new media and online destinations to get high profile artists exposure on the internet. Check out the website for more detail.

Therefore this will be the first official post that represents a new entity to the blog. I will still continuously post relevant urban entertainment news, but only if it is related to digital music and social media.

With that said.... for all you facebook junkies.. check out some of the facebook tweeks and upgrades to make the usability much more fruitatious.

"Facebook has made a few subtle changes to its design, which a lot of users have been noticing for the past couple of hours (thanks for telling us, y’all) and tweeting about. The two most apparent tweaks: the blue header bar now covers the entire width of the screen and rounded corners have been dropped from the social network’s web pages.

In addition, feedback on display ads has been changed from “Thumbs up/Thumbs down” to “Like/X.”

Here’s how the decision to drop the rounded corners, which were apparently subject to debate at Facebook ever since they were introduced a few years ago, gets explained by the company’s design team:

Since we introduced rounded corners to Facebook, their consistent use has been spotty at best. The corner radii vary, and it sometimes feels arbitrary which corners are rounded and which are not. Additionally, they add an extra layer of complexity to the code (note: IE, please add support for border-radius).

As part of the effort to simplify our visual style, the design team recently decided to go back to our square corner roots. In doing so, we hope to champion cleanliness and the razor cut look that Facebook is known for."

Courtesy of tech crunch

The Industry's Alternative Comes to The Coast 2 Coast Mixtape Convention

I would like to announce that I will be speaking at the first annual Coast 2 Coast Mixtape convention taking place in NYC at Club Touch on August 22nd. I will be speaking on the same panel as other new media professionals who are innovative and have opened up many avenues of promotion via the net for independent artists to use to gain exposure. Coast 2 Coast mixtapes is the biggest mixtape retailer and distributor that ever existed, so it's truly a pelasure to be included in the panel. I will be covering topics of how independent artists can use new media to create a dominate online presence, and I will also be talking about The Industry's Alternative services and how artists (Signed and Unsigned can take advantage of it) I will also be presenting for the first time, our brand new partnership with new media company "Socialcord".

Check out the website for more info on T.I.A. www.industrysalternative.com




WHO ARE THE PANELISTS?



CONFIRMED INDUSTRY PANELISTS INCLUDE:
LABEL/A&R PANEL

§ SENATOR SKID (DIRECTOR OF A&R FOR BADBOY RECORDS)

§ DRO (SHADY RECORDS)

§ BIG THEO (DIR. OF PROMOTIONS - INTERSCOPE RECORDS)

§ DAVEY DEE (UNIVERSAL/MOTOWN)

§ RAY EDWARDS (A&R - VIOLATOR MANAGEMENT)

§ ERIC BEASLEY (A&R ASYLUM)
NEW MEDIA PANEL

§ KP (DATPIFF.COM)

§ MICHAEL TRAMPE (HIPHOPDX.COM)

§ APEX (INDUSTRY ALTERNATIVES/A&R CONSULTANT FOR THUMBPLAY.COM)

§ "NIFTY" NEIL CAESAR (VP/CFO - DIGIWAXX MEDIA)

§ COREY "CL" LLEWELLYN (PRESIDENT/CEO - DIGIWAXX MEDIA)

§ BIG YU (NATIONAL ACCOUNT DIRECTOR- DIGIWAXX MEDIA)

§ LIL FATS (CEO - COAST 2 COAST MIXTAPES & MAGAZINE)
PRODUCER PANEL

§ BABY PAUL (LEGENDARY PLATINUM PRODUCER- BEATMINERZ)

§ KEN LEWIS (6X GRAMMY, 52X PLATINUM PRODUCER, CREDITS- KANYE WEST, TI, JAY Z & MORE)

§ THE LEGENDARY 'BUCKWILD' (PRODUCER FOR BIG PUN, BIG L, JAY Z, 50 CENT & MORE)

§ MISTA RAJA (PRODUCER/WRITER OF MAINO - "HI HATER")

§ PRESTIGE (MULTI PLATINUM PRODUCER - FORMERLY OF THE HITMEN)

§ DAHOUD DARIEN (MULTI PLATINUM PRODUCER)

§ NEO DA MATRIX (PRODUCER OF JADAKISS "CAN'T STOP", CASSIDY "AM TO PM", RIHANNA "SAY IT")
ETIQUETTE/PROFESSIONALISM PANEL

§ BOB CELESTIN (ENTERTAINMENT ATTORNEY FOR PETEY PABLO, TOCARRA & OUTKAST)

§ RIKERS (VP OF MARKETING FOR STALL AND DEAN CLOTHING)

§ DOVE (TYGEREYE ENTERTAINMENT/PUBLICIST FOR AMADEUS, NU JERZEY DEVIL, JAH CURE)

§ DONALD HARRISON (MARKETING DIRECTOR- COAST 2 COAST MIXTAPES/DJS)

§ MARC SMILOW (MANAGER - MULTI PLATINUM PRODUCERS/SONGWRITERS)

§ WALTER JONES (R&B MEMBER REPRESENTATIVE ASCAP)

§ JODIE SAUERAKER (EXPONENT ENTERTAINMENT- E. NESS/TONE TRUMP/REED DOLLAZ/TEKNEEK & MORE)

§ SEBASTIAN RICHARDS (MUSICALADE.COM)

Record Exec Hate to see and Independent Machine moving in a Major way

Very interesting article I caught on Billboard.com

It's funny how Sylvia Rhone chose to pass up Drake back in the day, but yet still gets first dibbs to sign him. People are always trying to stop the independent machine from conquering. Drake tried to stay independent and just be released through a leg of Universal, instead those snakes found a way to change the contractual agreement and have all of his mixtape tracks be credited through them, so now of course they get a piece.

This dude has been basically forced to sign with Universol Motown! I actually had the pleasure of meeting Sylvia Rhone before.... she came off like a bitch.

Read Article

Man Sues Oprah for 1 Trillion dollars

Not 100 percent sure if this is true or not, but it sounds pretty credible.

Big up to Global Grind for this one

A Bronx, NY man has brought a $1 trillion lawsuit against Oprah. He claims the talk show queen stole his work, then profited handsomely from its sale.

According to the National Enquirer author Damon Lloyd Goffe said in the complaint that "in April 2008 Oprah confessed to seizing original works of authorship" and published on the internet the first draft of his work " A Tome of Poetry" under another title "Pieces of My Soul."

Damon also alleges that Oprah sold over 650 million editions of the work online for $20 a copy which "calculates for 1.2 trillion dollars!"

Damn Harpo!!