Dec. 4, 2009 -
PRLog -- In 1964 when CEO of UpSouth Entertainment Tony Shannon was in diapers the music industry had by then at least a 20 year head start in the race. Born in Queens New York Tony was a chubby kid who was looking for his nitch...not much of an athlete he at age 11 found his call when his parents bought him a guitar for Christmas. From the time he stroked his first chord he became a music junky...playing all his music heroes on the radio at the time. Around 1979 a new thing called rap was coming of age. Tony was there in Lincoln Park Queens when the DJ’s took to the mic. Fast forward to 2001...by then he had graduated with a degree in music...served three years as an Army Officer and a home in Atlanta Georgia. The vision of running an independent rap label began to seep into his soul. By 2002 he incorporated and signed his first artist SLUGZZ...a bright eyed kid from Murphy North Carolina. Wearing all hats...he tried to gain ground...but found himself dancing to the beat of the industry that had a twenty year head start and much more cash than he could imagine. He knew that it all boiled down to marketing...even if the music was arguably not the best...a record could be broken with the right type of marketing plan. “Back in 1994...I had a friend of mine ask me if I had an email address, and I wasn’t really sure what he was talking about.” By 2006 if the question was asked to anyone and they had to wonder what was being talked about...one would have to wonder what planet is this guy from? “The playing field changed...and tools like myspace, youtube, and iTunes closed the twenty year gap. Today UpSouth Entertainment, Inc. has five artist signed. The guy we are focusing on now is SLUGZZ...we have him in iTunes, myspace, and jango...and online internet radio station. So much power has been given back to the independent...which by the way is the way the game started...read the book Hit Men.” In the next month we are going to be at least 500 thousand copies sold on iTunes, and our fan base of a few thousands will be in the tens of thousands. When asked what he feels about all this recent success...Tony says...”My artist have dreams that have come true, kids to feed and bills to pay. Yes the money is good...but it’s only an earthly method of exchange...God gave us the desires of our hearts in his plan for our lives. I would encourage anyone who wants to be in the game to go for it...the tables turned and we now have a way to market our artist online!”
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UpSouth Entertainment, Inc. is an independent Hip Hop record label based in Atlanta Georgia. UpSouth is the result of Tony Shannon’s dream to see young southern rap artist reach the world through great music.
