You heard right. MTV is taking advantage of their built in audience with the teen demo and will be launching a record label division with Snoop Dogg as their first artist. Snoop recently left his long-term deal with Interscope to be the pioneering artist for the MTV label. As part of the deal MTV will hold the exclusive rights to distribute, market and promote his next album, “Malice in Wonderland,” out later this year.

MTV is still finalizing distribution details to get the album into stores. From a marketing perspective, I’m surprised that MTV never launched something like this before. The main issue though is that for the past 3-4 years their focus has been on female teens, hence programming like “The Hills,” “Laguna Beach,” “MADE,” “The City” the list goes on and on. As a result young male teens have been tuning out the network as shows like “Jackass” were never replaced.

Well according to MTV, things are going to change. Their new programming schedule calls for more male friendly shows including a spin-off of “Jackass” to lure the guys back. This is all part of a bigger initiative to then have artists like Snoop come in and market the hell out of his album. Does this mean Snoop will unseat Diddy as the hip-hop king of MTV? Well Snoop will also be hosting a new variety show, “Dogg After Dark,” Feb. 17 on MTV. We will have more details on the Snoop and MTV collab as they come in.