Algebra Blessett took years to drop her first album. And finally she did in 2008. But not the way she should have. But thats not her fault. But first allow me to clarify that this is NOT a criticism of her music or album. The focus here is on her label and the marketing companies they employ. First the album release seemed to take forever. She had written enough music for 4 albums by the time her first was released. I first heard about her in 2004. Since that time it took 36 months (36!) to release her album. But I wont dwell on the inner issues with KEDAR her label founded by the same person that helped break Erykah Badu, India Arie, and D'Angelo.

What I really want to focus on is the traditionalist approach to their marketing. Sure getting music in brick and mortar stores is important and radio airplay on commercial radio couldn't hurt. But its different now. Between January and June downloable music sold over 1 billion dollars worldwide and accounted for its highest percentage in format (20%) worldwide.

You cant do what everyone else is doing anymore. The game has changed. Actually it changed 12 - 15 years ago when I was working at a record company that shall remain nameless and they told me that digital downloads would end with DRM. DRM is a technology that kept you from doing simple things like copying albums to your computer. The result was less sales because people didn't like it (I know I didn't). The record labels didn't understand what was happening 15 years ago. And 15 years and 10 billion dollars later they still don't.

File sharing with music was and still is a movement. Whats a movement? A movement is : a message, a group of people that connect to that message, and a call to action.  It's that simple.

So the messages was "we want free music because the labels are screwing us over when they sell albums that don't have many hits."

The people connected with that message and when Napster arrived they took action. Napster recognized the issue and solved the problem which created the call to action. Napster allowed for people to share their music and therefore created the paradigm that forever changed the way music was sold and marketed to be sold.

Algebra should have gotten down on her knees, and reached down to Kedars little self and pick his little ass up and shake him. Why? Well music business 101. You never release a album in the mist of a major competitor (Erykah Badu was the same 2 weeks). Then they had this jounior super wack marketing team that was promoting her (if you want to call it that) and T pain at the same time so I get mr buy me a drank more than Ms Blessett.

They marketed Algebra traditionally in the nontraditional digital era. George Bernard Shaw said that "Hell is filled with Musical Amateurs".  KEDAR and his bootleg outsourced marketing company aka Think "wack" Tank marketing in New York had a "hell" of a time with this poor girls album. 

Let her experience be your lesson. Run Algebra RUN.