Mike Posner's iTunes Hack

Mike Posner shares how he creatively used iTunes U to distribute his music for free during his college years at Duke.

"I knew no one was gonna pay for my music because we weren't paying for Kanye's music - we weren't paying for Jay Z. The artists we loved the most, we were stealing their music. So I understood that and I understood it was important to be on these hip hop blogs, but then I needed to get my music on iTunes.

I found out who was in charge of iTunes U for Duke - if you're a Duke professor and you want to post your lecture, how do you get up there? I found out it was a man named Todd Stabley. I cold emailed him, we did a phone call, and his number was the same area code as mine - 248. He goes 'I'm from Southfield Michigan.' Where are you from? I said 'Come on!'

I said 'Look, this is what I'm trying to do - I'm a student artist and I want to share my album on iTunes U.' He goes 'Oh yeah man, from Southfield, you're a student, we can put it on iTunes U no problem.'

So I got my music onto iTunes and when you searched, my album came up but the price was free. Any other music cost $1.29 or $9.99, but mine was free. Then I got busy on Facebook, created a Facebook event with a link to the album. I activated all my communities - friends at different colleges across the country. I had my fraternity pledges send the invitation to everyone in their network and change their profile pictures to my album cover.

From there, pretty much every college in the US was listening to Mike Posner that year. And it started off small - 50 people at shows, then I'd get booked at some bar. A month later, there'd be 300 people there knowing every word to my song. The iTunes U thing was a really great hack."