Free downloands - Are they really helping?

The beginning of this week saw another free grime instrumental release courtesy of Dot Rotten. Alongside Dot Rotten over the past couple of months we have witnessed a number of free instrumentals surface on the forums and twitter courtesy of Teddy & G Tank, Rudekid and Midlands producer of the moment S-X to name a few.



Free grime releases from MC’s, DJ’s and producers are definitely not a new thing and have been a noticeable characteristic of the grime scene for many years. Obviously for some it’s an immediate means of promotion and at times it could be interpreted as very effective. Furthermore it offers producers and MC’s the opportunity to clear out some potentially hidden gems that are remaining isolated on their hard drives.

From time to time however, this generosity receives negative feedback due to a belief that slinging a dozen instrumentals or vocals onto a zip file and uploading them to a forum or twitter for free isn’t productive in sustaining an ever growing, but at times fragile, grime scene.



Understandably putting tracks out officially onto the main MP3 stores carries its costs. However, at times costs cannot be used as an excuse. For example when one week a producer releases an EP onto iTunes and then some weeks later they put one of the featured tracks onto a free download bundle. These sorts of actions seem nonsensical and definitely counterproductive in terms of supporting the scene.

Fortunately in recent times the producers have taken notice of the requests on the forums and are starting to release a great deal more of their tracks that would otherwise only reach the scene’s main DJs and we'd have to live with radio rips.



So over the next few weeks and months here are a selection of the many releases we can look forward to and support …

Bless Beats – ‘ The Official Mixtape Volume 1’ set for release on 12th July which is available for pre-order at UK Record Shop now. This forthcoming release features instrumentals from Wiley’s ‘Local Lad’ and ‘Where’s my brother?’ and my personal favourite ‘Vittel’



J Beatz – ‘1 Dutty EP’ gets its digital and vinyl release on 19th July in all top MP3 & record stores which features the bangers; ‘Dutty’ used on Big H’s ‘Life and Death’ and ‘Tazer,’ the instrumental featured on Badness and Shizzle’s ‘Tarzan.’



Spooky’s ‘Murderer EP’ finally gets its digital release on 19th July which I featured on a recent grime instrumental release round up. Stay tuned for various future releases from Spooky such as ‘Spartan EP’ and ‘a bag of Myths EP.’



Finally Rudekid’s – ‘Hypnotize EP’ which will be released digitally on August 16th will once again feature 4 massive instrumentals that have been doing the rounds on radio for the past few months. Personal favourites on this release are ‘Raindrops’ and ‘Always Ready.’



As usual keep an eye on GRIME FORUM for further information regarding forthcoming releases and downloads.

Out to all those pushing the sound from a DJ and Producer point of view, you know who you are.