by Steve Rifkind

New York, NY (January 21, 2009) - As I am sure everyone saw yesterday, Barack Obama was sworn in as our 44th President of the United States. It’s a tough time for American but it’s also an exciting time. One where hard work and intelligence will pay off.

That being said, I am starting off my new year with a new venture investing in the youth. As you guys probably already know, I am a huge basketball fan and I have partnered up with Vision Sports. Responsible for the major AAU Basketball tournaments around the county including the Easter Classic and the Main Event, Vision Sports has developed the careers of todays college and NBA basketball stars.  I am very excited to be involved.

Another venture we are launching this year is a new vodka line, called Silver Dagger. Be on the lookout for it everywhere you would expect to see high-end vodka.

Now, onto the music. The music landscape has been changing for years, but as I have always believed, good music trumps everything. Akon’s new album “Freedom” is out right now and he has another smash single to add to his growing collection with “Beautiful.”

Asher Roth has released his official first single, “I Love College,” and it is blowing up at radio. Everyone on the site should take note of the way we broke Asher. It started with working the Internet with a mixtape, video and freestyles. He released a good amount of material to build his base, and now his career is on the rise.  The lesson?  Cover your bases on the Internet. Put in your work on Loud.com and other such sites; then once you get a fanbase, release that single and you will be ready to go. Y ou can’t forget the streets, however. The streets will forever be responsible for Asher’s rise.

Melanie Fiona ’s new single “Give It To Me Right” is out now and heating up at radio and on the web.  She just got off Kanye West’s European tour. She is a phenomenal talent and her sound is truly her own. Check her out as we are going to break her this year, as well.

Shontelle is still grinding and it is exciting to see a new artist like her continue to work and find success. The album is out and after her first hit single “T-Shirt,” she is back with a new single produced by and featuring Akon, called “Stuck With Each Other.”  Look out for the video coming very soon.

We are already in the middle of The Finalists for Loud.com, and I really like what I am seeing. You guys need to keep grinding it out and realizing with 100 grand on the line, there is no reason to half-step. Show me what you can do, and if you guys have any feedback or comments, please let me know. I like hearing what you guys have to say.

- Steve

First off, congrats to Barack Obama. What an amazing week that was. It was brought to my attention this weekend that the Blackberry Bold is now available on AT&T. This means there are now three 3G phones on the market with the Bold, Apple Iphone, and Google’s G1. With the introduction of these new phones to the market, what is going to happen to mp3 players? Now you can download music directly to your phone and use it as an mp3 player. The only issue with these phones is there storage capacity is nowhere near that of ipod. If you wanted to hold thousands of songs your phone is not capable of doing so. How many songs do you guys have on your ipods? Are you interested in having your phone also be your mp3 player if it can store all your music? Sandisk makes the flash drive cards for mobile phones that essentially act as a second hard drive so you can store lots of information on your phone. If you were able to upgrade your new Bold or G1 would you abandon your mp3 player? Also below are photo’s of each phone. Which one do you think looks the best? How much do looks influence your decision to buy a phone?

Google G1

Apple Iphone

Blackberry Bold

Blackberry Storm

What’s up guys?

It’s the 4th quarter in the music industry which is always the busiest time of the year. All the big hitters are coming out in the next two months including two of SRC’s own, Shontelle and Akon. Back in the heyday of CD sales there was a fourth quarter at Loud we we billed $100 million in sales. Obviously with the change in music from physical to digital we will not be selling that many CD’s, but thanks to new technology, we will be moving lots of digital tracks, ringtones, iphone apps, etc. Shontelle’s album is coming out November 18th and the single “T-Shirt” which we had the remix contest for on this site is doing great at radio and on Itunes. My question to you guys is do you read the reviews on Itunes? Do you find them to be effective or helpful? How many of you buy stuff on Itunes? Let me know what’s up.

What’s going on? I haven’t checked in on here for a bit because I have been busy working on the Akon album, “Freedom.” The album is coming December 2, 2008 and it’s incredible.  Akon shot two videos for it that you will be seeing shortly. He was in the office the other day and we had an impromptu dance session. Check it out below.

We here in the building are continually in shock as to the number of emcees who think they couldn’t use $100,000 - both the dope ones and the wack ones. Obviously the emcees who’ve signed up and are knee-deep in heavy work have made a commitment to do everything in their power to get the money and the deal, for better or worse… but what about the rest of you? Where are you? What’s the hold-up? Are you too good for the contest? You think the contest and the money are not real? For all the non-believers…

What’s up guys?

I wanted to write you today to discuss a very serious issue on Loud.com. During the voting process we have noticed that seems to be a lack of respect for each other on the site. People are voting each other’s contest entries down so they don’t reach the heights they are worthy on the leaderboard. There is also the problem of people posting multiple entries to that point that they take up 20 consecutive spots on the leaderboard. Some are even going so far as to setup ghost accounts on the site. This all has to stop. Even if you have 20 songs posted it doesn’t make your chance of winning any highher. When we see that we will just take a listen to 19 other contestants.

There is no reason to sabotage another person’s chance to win. We are going to find the best submissions each round regardless of what tactics you guys use. Everyone play fair and let’s have fun.

What’s up Guys?

It’s crazy to see this summer winding down but we got a lot of new stuff coming for the fall so I am excited to get into it. Thanks for all the feedback on the last post.

With the music industry changing in terms of the formats for the music we purchase and all of the new technology people are searching for what’s next. The advent of the ipod and mp3 players as not only music players but as places for digital storage has been the most successful source to store music and anything digital. I have been using a thumb drive or usb drive to keep all of my music and documents with me on the go and I love it. Do you guys use USB drives? What kind of storage devices do you use for music? Also with all of these cell phones being able to store mp3’s space on these devices become a real issue. Are you guys familiar with the micro SD cards that have storage space in the cell phones? Does anyone use those to keep the excess information and music on their phone? If the iphone is indicative of the future where we all carry one device do you envision being able to keep everyone on one device even if that means your phone has to be bigger than an ipod to have both phone capabilities and store 80gb’s of music? Music is going hand in hand with technology these days and it is really exciting.

What’s up everyone? I am a huge sports fan but my true love is basketball. I still play to this day and I coach my son Alex’s AAU team, the Del Ray Blazers. Needless to say I was one of the one billion people that watched the USA “Redeem Team” defeat China. With the Olympics upon us it is great to turn on the television and find sports on all day long.

Between Lebron and Yao the major American companies have a tight grip on basketball in the Olympics as far as advertising is concerned. Basketball is a global game at this point but with companies like Nike bringing the culture of basketball to China where does that leave music? Do you guys think China would ever be open to hip hop? Does having Lebron and Yao be such big stars make a better case for hip hop’s acceptance into the Chinese culture? Keep in mind one of China’s biggest artists, Edison Chen, has already collaborated with Kanye West and Just Blaze. I would love to know your thoughts.