I had always hoped it would get to a point where it would be what it is today where it’s the standard. I had hoped that at one point we would grow to become a platform that could help artists that really didn’t have the resources of those that were signed to major labels. I hoped for it, especially as our platform grew. You guys didn’t think the mixtape industry would change to where it’s an essential element of almost every rap artist’s career? We just wanted a site that we could show to our friends, promote on Myspace, and yeah so we started progressively seeing the growth and the potential for what it could be. So we started seeing 50, 100 people on the site each day and to us it was crazy because we never really thought about that. People were “Yahooing,” for lack of a better word, the terms “mixtapes” “free mixtapes” “buy mixtapes” etc and they just kind of stumbled across us. Google wasn’t really prominent at that point, it was more Yahoo. I started running the marketing and content side of things and getting artists on board by getting them familiar with what Datpiff is. He was looking for someone that would operate it and fill it with content so I came in right in the beginning. Marcus is a coder and programmer, and he had the idea of putting together a site like Datpiff to share mixtapes with his friends online at a time when that was kind of impossible unless you physically burned them a copy of a mixtape that we would buy on Canal Street. How did you and CEO Marcus Frasier start Datpiff? We also covered Lyor Cohen making him remove thousands of Gucci Mane tapes, his relationship with DJ Drama and his part in helping Meek Mill sign to MMG.

But if you’re a rap fan who likes free music, you knew all of that already.Īs a prelude to his June speaking engagement at NXNE Festival in Toronto, I quizzed Vice President Kyle “KP” Reilly on how Datpiff got started, which careers he helped launch, and if they let labels buy views. This helped artists to freely share music online, whilst gaining new fans and satisfying old ones.ĭatpiff has worked with superstars, helped thousands of careers, hosted over half a million projects, and permanently altered the music industry. Datpiff were among the first to pioneer digital mixtapes and took some of the distribution power from labels. Since Datpiff was founded in 2005, mixtapes have evolved from compilations traded on street corners to a career necessity for any rapper without Jay-Z’s Rolodex.

Datpiff lil baby too hard