Underground Hip-Hop CD’s can be hard to find sometimes. The local record shops will have 1. your more popular underground hip hop 2. your local underground hip-hop and 3. an assortment of sometimes horrifically crappy underground rap music from the anus of Satan. That last one can only be found in Portland, Oregon. Finding the music you like is easy. With Pandora Radio, and other websites that make it easy to find new music, you can have all of your favorite underground artists any time you want. Download it for free, pirate it, buy the mp3’s, etc. But if you are looking for the physical CD’s many of these underground albums are very hard to find. Or are they?

Today I bought 10 NEW CD’s from my favorite underground artists off of Amazon.com – for under $100 (including shipping and handling). I don’t know why the CD’s are so cheap (often cheaper than buying mp3’s). They come new, in plastic wrap, unscratched. I am a little old-school and tend to cling to things longer than other people. I like the sound vinyl records make, I like collecting things that I love. And I love hip-hop. Collecting CD’s has been a part of my niche of underground hip-hop culture since I can remember. Other than the old days of BMG Music Club (R.I.P) this is the best deal for buying physical CD’s anywhere. Their selection is HUGE. Look for yourself.

Visit Amazon to buy hard to find underground hip hop CD’s for cheap. If you were looking for some other options here are a few really good places to snag some great underground hip hop music for a good price:

CDBaby: This is the largest and most popular site for independent musicians, and any MC worth listening to (without a record deal) is bound to have their tracks listed here. CD Baby is a great place to find mixtapes, singles, freestyle compilations, etc. The search feature is really easy to navigate and the best part is that you are supporting independent hip hop artists who receive a much large percentage of album sales than they would through a conventional record deal. CDBaby offers music in both digital and- you guessed it- CD format. Sorry, no 8 Track…

CDUniverse: Similar to CDBaby, this website offers competitive pricing on their CDs. They also offer vinyl recordings of a wide variety of musical styles- a gold mine of information for DJ’s looking for new music to sample.  Unlike CDBaby, this website tends to cover the more commercial rap groups such as the Black Eyed Peas and Lil’ Wayne. If you’re looking for the up and comers, you’re better off with CDBaby.

UndergroundHipHop: This store is a happy medium between the former two; it’s got underground hip hop CDs from both signed and unsigned artists. While it doesn’t have the same search functionality as the others, this site is more like an actual record store; you walk around and browse. I really like UndergroundHipHop for its selection of music that I’m interested in. Obviously, it caters to a sub genre of rap albums, so it’s either your cup of tea or it isn’t.

These websites provide quality hip hop CDs at reasonable prices. Some, like CDBaby, actually provide an avenue for under the radar artists to promote their work and actually make a living doing it. Selling Cds online is going to be the way for the next generation of artists to get noticed, so check them out before your friends do!

Besides just being your own boss there are huge financial advantages to beginning independent. You don’t have to worry about going into debt. As an independent hip-hop artist / CEO you’ve got a ton of potential to get money. If you were with a record label and you sold ten to one hundred thousand albums that would be a total failure and you wouldn’t make a lot of cash off record sales. But if you sold ten to a hundred thousand albums as an independent artist, with the money from the album and shows, you could make at least a couple hundred thousand bucks even after all of your expenses. This is more than many artists who are signed make.

By being independent an artist will run a tighter ship than they can on a major label. Massive labels need to purchase the cost of huge office buildings, huge staffs of executives (many with huge salaries), receptionists, assistants and the list goes on and on. Those expenses for the most part are all taken out of revenues from digital and physical album sales of the artists on the label. Besides that, the unfortunate truth is that not all artist projects are promoted equally. Therefore you’ll be in result paying for the promotion of somebody else’s album with your album sales. When you are independent you never have to stress regarding that because all the resources invested are going toward your projects and you solely employ those people who are vitally necessary to run the operation.

It’s called “Starting Independent” because once you reach a certain level of success you almost certainly will need to form a deal a big label. There are positively some advantages to signing with a significant label. Major labels can place your music in markets that may be really difficult to reach as an independent. It’s a lot easier to get radio play and general recognition for your project when you are with a major label.

If you do decide to try to do a contract wih a major, it is important to have any contract looked over by an entertainment lawyer before signing any contract with a major label. But it’s equally vital to educate yourself the terminology utilized in contracts for a label deal. You don’t need to leave your fate to anyone else. Make no mistake it’s important to have folks like lawyers and accountants who are specialists in their fields, however you need to be an amateur lawyer and accountant also when it involves the details connected to your career.

The really good thing when it comes to reaching a high level of success as an independent is that once you approach a major label or once they approach you, they don’t “give you a deal” you negotiate a deal and also the more success you have had, in general the more lucrative the deal you’ll be able to get. If you’ve reached that level where you’ve sold ten to one hundred thousand albums already, the record label will see you as having a higher value than someone who just got “discovered.” Artist, “Solo 7″ of 7broadwayent.com commented, “I want to keep grinding until} the point where I don’t need a major label, so when I sign its simply the icing on the cake.” Artists like Solo 7 continue to enjoy success building their fanbase independently with no major label backing.

Finally when you have had some measure of success independently, your approach dealing with a major label will be totally different. You won’t be desperate for a deal the way somebody who was just performing at talent shows or doing other free shows simply hoping the right person would discover them would be. You’ll probably be comfortable knowing that you’ll be able to sell 50,000 or five hundred thousand more albums down the road.

Underground Hip Hop Group

Bad Habitat

Read more about Northwest Hip-Hop and Underground Hip-Hop Concert Venues in and around Portland, Oregon like Salmon Street Studios.

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