T-Pain Hosts Music Fan Remix Contest On Indaba Music For Cash Prize

Hip hop/rap recording artist T Pain is hosting a contest to remix his newest single "Take Your Shirt Off". The contest is being held through the innovative music collaboration network indabamusic.com.

T Pain is on the look out for new recording artists and music producers. This is a smart marketing strategy to attract new music talent to network with. Contestants can submit their own remixes to the single for a chance to win a grand prize of $500 cash ! Contest closes January 16th, 2010 at 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Check it out at indabamusic.com today !

I Am T-Pain App Raises A Fresh Round Of Funding From Music Business Investors

The I Am T Pain iPhone application continues to soar, reaching an approximate number of 2 and a half million paid-for digital downloads. A fresh round of funding, $8 Million in investments have been raised in support of expanding the market for this already commercially successful application.

Software developer Smule will now be able take things a few steps further to build upon the popularity of this simple and socially interactive app.

Distributed digitally, the app is a perfect example of providing music fans with more accessibility to your content in order to establish a better connection. T Pain, who continues to build his brand name quickly into a icon in popular hip hop culture.

Plus music fans are always happy to support a medium which is just over all fun to use and easy to share with friends. These are important elements in a successful music marketing strategy for mainstream hip hop artists.

Most Paid For Digital-Download, Song of the Decade According To SoundScan

Flo Rida's smash hit single "Low" feat. T Pain is the single most paid for digitally downloaded song in the past decade of internet pirates and media content junkies (i.e. your average music fan).

"Low", the first single released by Flo Rida upon his emergence in the rap music business, quickly made the rapper famous. It also made him rich, the song was one of the most popular ringtones which was purchased and digitally downloaded by millions of music fans directly to their mobile phones.

What do you think about Flo Rida's fast rise to success in the music industry ? Will he fall off, or continue to ball ? Right now the rap artist is on top of the world, having released seven seperate singles in the passed three years, and seeing most of them hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts.

There's lots of money out there selling rap music, especially when you begin to re-invent ways of marketing directly to your fans. Flo Rida is the prime example of a rap artist who concentrated on creating popular music, putting on exciting performances and satisfying the fans taste for a new sound in hip hop.
Here's the single most paid-for-downloaded song of the decade ya'll !

T-Pain's A Hit, AutoTune iPhone App Achieving Success In Digital Sales

The "I Am T-Pain" application for the Apple iPhone is starting to pick up some serious steam. Quickly after it's release, the app has reached a plateau of over 300,000 digital downloads. At $2.99 USD a download, that adds up to be roughly $897,000 earned in sales. Not too shabby.

T-Pain is currently hosting a contest for the funniest remakes of his songs. Users are encouraged to send their video remix through YouTube. The rapper is offering cash prizes for the winners as incentives. One of the songs many people have chose to remix is the funny "I'm On A Boat" track which was written by The Lonely Island (a group of actor/comedy writers from Saturday Night Live) featuring T Pain.

All in all, over 1 million user generated recordings have been made using this application. Pretty impressive numbers for only being on the market about one month.
Check out this cool video of other hip hop artists using the I Am T-Pain application for the Apple iPhone.

Rapper T-Pain Promotes New Auto-Tune iPhone App

That's right, now you too can be T-Painin' !

The Apple Store now features the new "I Am T Pain" application for $2.99. Antares, the company which developed Auto-Tune, partnered with the rapper to create this new app. It is a first of it's kind, allowing users to alter their vocals, record and share music uploads via e-mail and the popular social networks such as MySpace and FaceBook.

Jay-Z's first single "D.O.A. (Death Of AutoTune)" had stirred up a minor controversy about the relationship between these two rap artists. T-Pain went on record to to respond by saying "FUCK JAY-Z!". This app will no doubt only increase the popularity of the Auto-Tune trend that has impacted the rap music business for quite some time now.

This is a great marketing strategy for T-Pain, who further develops his AutoTune-esque style and cements his brand name and position within pop culture. What are your thoughts on this development?

Big Week for Hip Hop On The Billboard

HIP HOP AIN'T GOING ANY WHERE !

At least that's what I yell at anyone who questions hip hop's future, or rap music's successful status in the music industry. You can't argue with the stats when they come out, so here it is, this week's top 10 on the Billboard hot 100 charts...

1. Black Eyed Peas - "Boom Boom Pow" *
2. Lady GaGa - "Poker Face" (yes, still !)
3. Jamie Foxx featuring T Pain - "Blame It" *
4. Pitbull - "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" *
5. Kid Cudi - "Day N Nite" *
6. Beyonce - "Halo" *
7. 3OH!3 - "Don't Trust Me" ~
8. Flo Rida featuring Wynter - "Sugar" *
9. Jeremih - "Birthday Sex" *
10. Soulja Boy Tell em featuring Sammie - "Kiss Me Thru The Phone" *

The *'s mark the 8/10 songs on the top 10 that I think are hip hop/urban music. That's a pro dominant 80% of hip hop presence in the top 10 ! What I also got from this was learning of a new music duo from Colorado.

I had to look up the 7th listing, "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3 on YouTube just to hear the track for the first time. It wasn't half bad actually it was pretty f'in hilarious when I watched some of the video while listening to the song. Check it out for your self and let me know what you think. I thought it was decent enough.

Anyway the whole point of this rant is hip hop continues to run shit in the main stream music sector. It's the most competitive genre during these times in my opinion, due to the fact that hip hop culture is fun and right now during rough times everyone can use some fun. Music is fun that's why there are so many hip hop/rap artists today as the number continues to sky rocket (believe me, I've dug deep into the depths of the million of hip hop producers and rap artist's MySpace pages).

Everybody wants to rap, live breath and love hip hop, it's a fun culture. It is a permanent fixture of entertainment, in our movies, TV shows, mags and video games. Plus if you are talented or even an entertaining artist that can be related to by millions, you can build a profitable music business.

That's the beauty of the hip hop world, I think, it promotes self improvement, success and good quality of life. At least that is the impression that I get when I look at a Billboard top 10 that is pro dominantly 80% HIP HOP MUSIC ! We aint going anywhere baby, HIP HOP WE IN HERE !