Street Team - History

History

The now ubiquitous "street team" model was originally developed by urban record labels such as Loud Records, Jive, Bad Boy, Roc-A-Fella, Priority Records, and Ruthless Records. Rap labels found an affordable and highly effective bridge to their target audience that did not require the traditional outlets found in print, radio, television mediums and elusive large scale record distribution deals.

It was a modern version of a credible "cool" field marketer working for you with the ability to create hype for your artist (brand) through credible peer-to-peer interactions and viral word-of-mouth influence marketing.

This grassroots tactic was partly born in the mid-1990s from the larger monopolistic record distributors trying to shut out rap and smaller music labels of the day from radio and mass distribution due to the early stigma of "gangsta rap" and "punk" on those genres as a whole.

Street Teams were used by smaller independent record labels as a tool to circumvent the larger out-of-reach distributors and corporate owned record labels. Other independent label owners used street teams as a way to build equity in their stable of artists for the benefit of gaining a courtship by a larger music label or record distributor to merge or sell part or all the company. (see Loud Records sale late 1990s)

For the smaller labels trying to get in the door of the music business, the thinking was in part to build a loyal fan base in key markets first, get strong street hype and "street-cred" first, try to get on the local radio stations through hype/word-of-mouth, then go to the larger record distributors with a much stronger negotiating hand and a solid "sellable" commodity.

Through this method of building a solid fan base with disposable income first, the smaller label wielded greater power in their initial distribution negotiations for the benefit of their music artists and their profit margins. Distribution deals for an "unproven" new artist that came with a built-in fan base, generally received better upfront money deals than music artists had previously received without street teams sharing the music and spreading the word (viral marketing) nationwide.