2. Formation and History
Jamal Edwards received a camcorder for his 17th birthday in 2007. He started off by filming random things; "I was filming foxes in my garden.
When I uploaded that, I got 1,000 views and I was like, 'What? Let me just try something else.'” he then started to film people from his estate
performing freestyle raps, then uploading to them to his YouTube account. At this time UK grime music- the cross between hip hop and UK
garage- was gaining steam as a recognised genre of music, however it was not yet fully mainstream and so this was the gap that Edwards
needed to make his millions. In his first 3 years he filmed such successful UK artists as Dizzee Rascal, Tinchy Stryder and Wiley. After these
three years his channel subscriptions and views rocketed and this prompted him to explore other avenues; now the channel performs
interviews with hit artists, covers live music events; and, more recently, makes music videos. After working alone for the majority of the
channels life, he now employs a production team of 10 young people. Edwards says his aim is to “become a more diverse youth broadcaster”.
Now SB.TV has over 100,000 subscribers, and has over 1,000 videos of freestyles and interviews of artists from all over the world. The channel
has run 2 series’ of videos: F64 and A64, F64 means ‘fresh 64’- 64 refers to the number of lines- and A64 means acoustic 64.
But he does not want the channel to be labeled as a grime music channel; recently, he and his 10-strong team have been filming the likes of
Ellie Goulding, Nicki Minaj and Bruno Mars. Even Justin Bieber has appeared on the channel. "Narrow-minded people are like, 'Ah, he's filming
all these pop stars,'" says Edwards. "But I just shrug my shoulders.” And in February he signed a deal with Sony RCA to create his own imprint
in the label, and he plans to move over to New York and do we he did here, there
SB.TV now has over 1,100 uploads.
Jamal Edwards; now 20, he is Britain's youngest
media mogul
Wretch 32 and Professor Green, two of the UK’s
biggest rap artists, performing their ‘Fresh 64’ for the
The channels profile on YouTube SB.TV cameras.
3. Why I Would Choose Them To Promote My
Artist
• As a media institution SB.TV has revolutionised the way that young people consume and receive new music. SB.TV has highlighted new talent
and promoted new artists into stardom (examples of this would be Ed Sheeran- the acoustic indie artist whose A64 video propelled him into
public consciousness and the mainstream media- and Maxsta- SB.TV’s first signing to their imprint on Sony RCA) and so I think that this would
be an appropriate platform from which to launch my artist from.
Ed Sheeran and Maxsta- two of SB.TV’s most successful artists.
Typically, SB.TV promotes grime and hip –hop/ rap, but recently it has branched out and has now incorporated all different types of
music, including pop and indie. Their target audience is
