Mike Posner, All Pop, No Guilt

Back in January, Duke University student and Detroit native Mike Posner -- who's spent the last five years writing and producing for other artists -- made the impulsive decision to hole up in his bedroom and finish up a mixtape.

"Somewhere along the way I realized that the stuff I was writing and trying to give to other people just didn't fit with them. Nobody could pull off the lyrics that I was writing except me," he says.

Knowing his prospective audience wasn't the Z-sharing demographic, 21-year-old Posner opted for a more familiar means of distribution: offering the album as a free download on iTunes. "I just tried to put my music in the most accessible place ever," he says. His plan succeeded quickly: in just two months, his album, "A Matter of Time," reached No. 1 on iTunesU. Soon after, he hooked up with manager Dan Weisman of Elitaste, and in June he inked a deal with J Records and Sony/ATV.

"Mike is an anomaly," says one of his agents, Alex Kirshbaum of NUE Agency. "In a matter of months, he's gone from recording in his dorm room to playing sold-out shows across the country, and the crowds are singing along to every word of his songs."

Read the rest of the article here.