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 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.

First off I want to say congratulations to David Banner on the release of his fifth album with SRC records. The Greatest Story Ever Told is now in stores and it has been a tremendous experience watching him grow as an artist.

On another note I want to speak on something that has really got me bothered and that is the leaking of records. I understand people don’t want to pay for music and instead of buying a CD they would rather download the album off the internet. I would rather get something for free as well. What really gets under my skin is when we as record company are preparing to release an album that both the artist and the label have spent a long time planning and someone decides to put out songs or the album. The ramifications of this for both the artist and the label are tremendous and usually the leaks come from someone close to the artist or their camp. No one benefits from leaking of records not the artist, label, and not even the leaker.

Also we were judging Round 1 and I just want to let everyone know they need to step it up. Make sure your mix is good and sounds clear and make sure the record is good and can stand up to anyone else’s before you submit it to be judged. I am giving you the chance at a record deal and one hundred grand and all you have to do is rap. So do it right and get this money.