Ning and record label G-Unit announce that they have a new initiative to support upcoming artists. Musicians can now submit their songs to the website ThisIs50.com. In an online contest called ‘Independent Fridays’ they can win airtime on the website. The website is originally an online community dedicated to G-Unit’s hip-hop act 50 Cent, but will now also offer new artists a chance to be featured on the site.

Last week Ning announced that a new collaboration with G-Unit and SoundCloud allows them to let users feature in customizable music players on their pages, access previously uploaded SoundCloud files and review uploaded tracks from members before posting.

Thisis50.com is taking full advantage of the latter feature with the launch of the new online contest Independent Fridays. The contest asks indie (unsigned) artists to submit their songs via SoundCloud for a chance to be seen by the G-Unit Artists & Repertoire scouts. The best song will be featured on Thisis50.com every week.

According to Jonathan Hull, director of strategic relationships of Ning, Thisis50.com is one of the most popular Ning networks. “It’s become a really, really relevant news source and entertainment source for hip-hop,” he says.

Corentin Villemeur, new media director of G-Unit Records, says that  “Every member on the site works hard to be seen and get some shine in the community,” This new venture should offer the said opportunity in the spotlights. According to Villemeur, getting signed by G-Unit is not the end goal, but it is a possibility.

The first round yielded around 1,500 submissions, and the winning song, “Get Paper,” has been listened to more than 8,000 times. “I was surprised by the quality of the songs we received. We have a lot of wannabe rockers on the site, and we’re impressed by the quality of the songs we’ve seen,” Villemeur says.

Source: Ning, Mashable