Online music gets the green light

A track released online by local hip hop artists P-Money and Scribe last week has taken the efficiency of digital music to the next level.

The award winning musicians uploaded ‘Green Light Go’ to P-Money’s online blog just two hours after its creation. The song was reviewed soon after.

“Four hours before that review was posted (online), the song didn’t exist, that’s how quick the cycle was,” says Money.

Online music consumers and artists are getting better feedback and are more up-to-date than ever before, due to the advantages of the internet.

“We decided to invite our fans into the process and say ‘here’s a demo, we wouldn’t usually play you a demo, but we like it’, and if everyone said it’s (bad) then we’d go back to the drawing board, but they liked it”, Money explains.

Websites such as Twitter, Myspace and wordpress2 are breaking down the divide between artists and fans. According to Real Groove editor Duncan Greive this benefits the music industry.

“The barriers that existed between musicians and listeners are no longer in place, and I think we’ll continue to see good creative stuff being released because of that.”

Myspace Music has over six and a half million artists in the Hip Hop/R&B genre alone, and its popularity is still growing.

Lydia Jenkin of New Zealand Musician magazine says “you don’t need anything but (an Apple) mac with a microphone on it,” to record high quality music nowadays.

She also says that artists on major labels such as Universal and Sony don’t have the flexibility that independent artists do when creating a buzz online.

“It’s an interesting scenario where they don’t have to deal with major labels and can easily throw their music up online, that’s the key thing that stops many bigger bands from dealing directly with fans.”

Money says he is happy with the response from fans online and will release the song on a future album.

Watch a short clip of Scribe and P-Money recording new material last week.