Mixtape mania not all good for hip-hop

In the battle for the music industry, the lines have been drawn.

The bigwig execs want to… In the battle for the music industry, the lines have been drawn.

The bigwig execs want to nickel-and-dime you for every penny you’ve got, forcing you to pay for each and every song an artist releases. That’s how things used to work. But like Biggie said, “The game done changed.”

We’re living in what people like to call The Information Age. The Internet, cell phones and all other kinds of technology that people never dreamed could be real have forced us to live a 24/7 lifestyle. Something is always happening, and if you don’t check your Twitter, Facebook and blogs every five minutes, you might miss it. Yes, we’ve all acknowledged that social media has changed the way we live, but not often enough do we

pay homage to what it has done for the music industry.

Without the help of a main-stream record label, Pittsburgh’s own Mac Miller has launched his way to the top of hip-hop stardom. With the promise of a new song every 100,000 followers, Mac Miller vaulted his way to Twitter fame, gaining 1,000,000 followers in what he called his “Road to 1,000,000” campaign, which eventually ended in the release of a mixtape titled I Love Life, Thank You. As Miller himself proclaims on the mixtape’s title track, “I just threw this f*ckin’ mixtape together because I love y’all.”

This trend of quickly assembled mixtapes is in no way uncommon, with many other artists following suit, including big-name artists who are signed to big-name labels. Take Chicago emcee Lupe Fiasco, for example. After Atlantic Records refused to release his album, Lupe went on a nationwide tour to prove to Atlantic that his music was indeed popular enough to sell.

After this technique failed to impress the record company, Lupe took matters into his own hands, releasing a mixtape titled Friend of the People: I Fight Evil. Half thank-you to his loyal fans, half rebellion against Atlantic, the mixtape demonstrated that the power that formerly belonged to the record labels might be back in the hands of the artists themselves.

While this new barrage of — mostly — free music has started to flood the web, it’s been called into question whether the high volume of tracks being produced are influencing the quality of the music itself.

Unlike those of official albums, the beats for mixtapes can be taken from virtually anywhere. If they’re producing a mixtape overnight, as many artists seem to do, they simply rap over someone else’s beat and call it a day. The unauthorized usage of someone else’s music is not legal, but that’s a discussion for a different column.

While this is not true of all mixtapes — the case can be made that mixtapes give more producers a shot at success — it does occur often enough to make people question whether certain artists would be good over their own beats or whether they need to implore the help of others for their own benefit. The same laws that govern music apply here as well.

The breakneck speed of mixtape production has also caused a lack of effort on the artist’s part, as many mixtapes contain only a few good tracks and leave the rest as filler. Unlike in the good old days, today’s mixtapes — and even albums for that matter — might only contain one or two likable songs, as artists try to appeal to wider audiences and seem to sell out far more often.

Again, there’s a plus side to this for the artists who are able to gain fans at a much faster rate by releasing a higher volume of music — especially when it’s free. But do the audiophiles and the true fans actually benefit?

As a self-proclaimed music lover, I’ve found that it is often too hard to keep up with the sheer amount of music being put out in such a short time span. Before I’m even done giving one mixtape a good listen, another has been released, often causing me to quickly skip through mixtapes without giving them the time they deserve.

Hey, at least I’m doing a good job of filling up the hard drive on my iPod.

Andrew Gretchko is a DJ at WPTS-FM and hosts the Golden Age and underground hip-hop show “Beats, Rhyme and Life,” which airs on the station every Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. He can be reached at agretch2000@gmail.com.