People // Matthew Siegel // Blog

Yesterday, in conjunction with Nettwerk Music Group and Universal Music Canada, Indaba Music launched an incredibly innovative program for progressive hip-hop artist K-OS. K-OS's new album is not being released until the spring, but starting yesterday, musicians around the world will have the chance to download, mix, and re-imagine the stems for all 11 songs on that not-yet-released album. This is an exciting opportunity in and of itself, but the best part is that K-OS is going to pick a winner from each contest to be awarded $1,000 and to be included on a companion album (also being released by Universal).

At Indaba, we're completely psyched about this for 2 reasons. One, this is an amazing, unprecedented opportunity for undiscovered musicians to collaborate with a major artist and actually get serious exposure by winning a spot on a major release. Two, this program demonstrates the extraordinary flexibility and depth that new technologies are adding to the traditional album production and release process. In the past, people wouldn't have a chance to interact with the artist or his content until it came out of the studio and was packaged for distribution (whether that's in the form of a physical CD, digital download, etc.). Here, we're demonstrating that an artist can engage musicians and fans even before an album is finished, building stronger connections with them, and hopefully creating a larger economic pie for everyone who has a stake in the album's success. We're running a similar program with Third Eye Blind concurrently, so I think it's only appropriate to wrap up this post by saying that Indaba is incredibly blessed to have found such progressive, forward-thinking artists that would enable us to demonstrate the utility of the technology and community we've built. Here's a link to the full press release about the K-OS program.