‘Adventures Of An Underfunded Indie Label’

As you can see, once again the Universal Indie website has been redesigned coinciding with a total restructuring of the label as whole. Originally, this label was created as a way of showcasing the music that I (Cartel) felt was missing in the majority of what’s released today. My roots are firmly entrenched in that 90’s sound and most of our previous releases reflected that.

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First of all I’d like to say that I’m very pleased with the way the iTunes LP release “Tha Throwback” is doing. I guess a curiosity about the format and the fact that it was created without Apple has led to increased downloading of this album and serves as an introduction to those who might have otherwise overlooked it when it was originally released last year. While we’re on the subject, the new Cartel album “Grown Folks Hip Hop” is the process of being completed as I type this. If I may say so myself, the album thus far is amazing and features a lot of new faces not previously seen on the past two albums while some of the more familiar faces aren’t present. This album will be released in both iTunes LP format and as a standard digital download.

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Let the record show that Universal Indie is the first independent hip hop label to release an album in Apple’s new iTunes LP format. Quite an accomplishment for this little label especially since Apple hasn’t provided the full specs to anyone outside of the major labels and the whole thing had to be reverse engineered (the only other hip hop one is Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3) . Took me a full weekend of playing with code to do so and though this first release is rather basic as far as what can be done with the format, I can definitely see the possibilities and look forward to creating a better one for our next release.

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A lot of visitors to this site may get the impression that Universal Indie is only on some “Little Brother” shit and that we only associate with artists along those lines. While I admit that I find myself gravitating more toward that kind of music because of it’s honesty my hip hop tastes are very diverse and so are the artists that Universal Indie will be releasing.

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I know I haven’t written a blog in a while and I’m sure most of you have already noticed the site update. This is an exciting time for me and I’m feeling better than ever about hip hop and more importantly, Universal Indie’s place in this new digital world. I’m combining some of the best elements of a net label with that of Almagam Digital’s model to create what I feel will be the best of both worlds for this label. We’ve just strengthened our digital distribution arm (no more physical distribution) and will be introducing releases by artists not affiliated within our original “click”. True signs that we are maturing as a label.

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