They decided to use a distribution model that emulated other independent artists, like Lil Wayne and Drake, who were online sensations in their early days. “When a blogger receives a new Hoodie track, it’s coming from him and not from a publicist, so there’s a level of personalizing there that I think people appreciate.”Īllen and manager Michael George, a former Atlantic Records intern who contacted Allen after hearing some early buzz about him, saw personal interaction as a mainstay of their strategy, and wanted to get Allen’s mixtapes into the hands of potential fans, pronto. “He’s essentially the embodiment of the modern do-it-yourself artist,” says Dev Sherlock, one of the operators of Hype Machine. The growing attention convinced Allen to quit Google and focus on his fanbase and on massaging the relationship he’d generated with music bloggers. His first taste of viral popularity came when the song “You Are Not a Robot” soared to the top of the charts on Hype Machine, a Web barometer of the music blogosphere.įans discovered his website, Twitter and Facebook accounts while downloading his songs for free. Interest in Allen’s music took off in 2010, when he was creating tracks while working a sales job at Google. “That really was the foundation of the philosophy.”

“I always liken music to a new product, and with any new product, you want to create as (few) barriers to entry as possible,” he says. of Pennsylvania helped him craft the careful strategy behind his success. It’s a social media success story many artists have attempted, but few have mastered, though marketing “All American” involved more than just answering fans: Allen’s degree in marketing from the U. The rapper, born Steven Markowitz, says he tries to answer every message from fans and critics, an effort that has helped him amass more than 51,000 tweets since 2008. “I don’t know anyone else who has even attempted to do this, or pretend like they are,” Allen says of his constant social media presence.

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