Old vs New grime

 OLD GRIME

Back in the early 2000s, grime was a very underground genre of music, and it was not very well known apart from in small pockets around London and the UK. The most popular way it was distributed was through CD mixtape, freestyle videos on Youtube (which began to get popular in 2005 on its release) and the occasional music video if the artist had enough money.

examples of mixtapes from early/earlier 2000s

Myspace 2008

As you can see, Grime was also very influenced by African-American culture and hip-hop videos and seemed to follow these videos as guidelines for their own. The sound of Grime, however, was and still is very different.

MODERN GRIME

These days, Grime is very high quality and everything is obtainable through the internet.

Freestyles use expensive to create, and even if they don't, phones now have HD video:

mixtapes also used to be a lot more popular, which I think is because people expect artists to distribute their music in more mainstream ways, like through Youtube - making a music video will almost definitely get you fans. I think the UK grime genre has almost come to terms with it being it's own genre, and artists seem to be a lot more comfortable being part of a brand of UK culture:

Grime artists are able to make a lot more money now since Skepta has taken off in America and is beginning to come in popular demand. There are also so many more ways to showcase music. More mixtape websites, more streaming services (soundcloud being the most popular free one) and social media platforms such as Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram to promote work. In this sense, anyone can become popular, sell out shows and become big in the world of Grime - it just takes some working around.