SA music releases 2.0

I read about an artist who was going to use new age technology to release his debut album in South Africa. I didn't really believe it until I saw an article on BizCommunity covering the subject.

It's amazing how innovative people can be when they put their minds to it and I guess the artist 'J' is laughing all the way to the bank with a big smile on his face because he was the artist that started a trend.

Nowadays people are not only buying musician's albums on CD, the new trend is to have multimedia with your album launch, for example, when the Parlotones, great South African band, recently released their new album. They had a DVD made of all their days in studio recording their album and also teamed up with Microsoft to present the Xbox 360 Summer Tour where they helped in promoting their new album as well as the Xbox around South Africa in December 2007.

Truly unbelievable what one can really do with music and technology, huh?

SA Artists doing it for themselves

Two major developments in the South African music industry have paved the wave for new and exciting methods of marketing an artist's album. I'm a geek and as part of the movement in SA, I follow the 27Dinner event which happens bi-monthly in JHB and Cape Town. Upon following the feedback from one of the dinners held in CT, I stumbled onto Verity's webpage.

Now this woman is really unique and she's a very talented musician, but instead of selling the rights to her skill to a record label, she has decided to take matters into her own hands..In an effort to make something of her musical abilities, she first started coaxing her friends and family to pay R150 towards your own copy of the future release of Verity's album, thereby contributing to the production of her upcoming album.

This marketing concept quickly spread online via her website and now she currently has 1,600 people all socially involved in the production of her album, which she is in studio producing at the moment. How clever is that?

Ordinary people have managed to be part of her creative process every step of the way and what's more interesting is that Verity can really call herself the 'people's artist' when she does drop her album.

You can check her site out to read more on her journey in the music biz and contribute to her album release if you want.