I have been agonizing over the music piracy issue for a long time now. I certainly empathize with artistes who claim that their earnings are hurt by piracy. What is the cost of piracy? Is it the value of the CD the entertainer could have sold? Or the cultural expression of a people?
Local music, in particular ragga-soca (Groovy Soca), has grown in popularity at a tremendous rate in the last 10 years: just around the time that the technology for easy reproduction became widely available locally.
It was about two decade ago, with the easy availability of record copying technology, we saw an emerging music piracy industry. It was also about a decade ago that we saw the emergence of a new type of artiste; the artiste who had a mass appeal among young people who referred to themselves as ‘ghetto people’. By their very name these music lovers proclaimed that they did not have the money to buy ‘legitimate’ music. They listened to the radio, went to the dancehall and bought pirated music when they could afford it.
Artistes like Lil Rick, MADD Entertainment and Peter Ram, Biggie Ire, and Red Plastic Bag made music for the ghetto people, so did top Bands Square One and krosfyah and their popularity was bolstered by the easy availability of their music bought from the music pirates. Pirates helped in no small part to make the emerging ‘ghetto music’ grow in popularity and go mainstream.
I want to suggest that without the part played by the pirates in this early stage this new and growing appeal of local music locally and in the Bajan diaspora was as a result of the easy availability of the music at a reasonable price! “First I heard my song on the streets, then in the dance and radio, now I am booked for the season” remarked one artiste.
People aren't buying pirated music because they don't like music and want to hurt the artiste --they're buying it because they can't get enough of it. Somehow, the music industry needs to harness that love and turn it into cash. They can start doing so by looking at the price of a pirated CD and acknowledging that that is the ‘market value’ of a CD. Put in another way, the price of a pirated CD is the price that is acceptable to the broad mass of people.
The challenge today for the local music industry is to acknowledge that it is the pirates who first saw the impact that the new music could have and that they too made an investment to grow that emerging market. Now that the market is substantial the ‘legitimate’ music industry wants to kill the goose.
The music industry needs to rethink their own operating costs and tailor their operations so that their CDs can be produced to suit the pockets of the buying public. They may just find out that in doing so the CD buying public would grow to the extent that the profit margins would make the industry sustainable once more.
It is time for more innovative thinking in the music industry. Make your product more affordable, in the big picture it’s the number of “Legitimate” unites you sell locally. The music industry must study how the pirate thinks and how he operates. It may prove to be a useful tool in reclaiming their economic rights in the music.
Michael Murray
Keep the Faith.
Local music, in particular ragga-soca (Groovy Soca), has grown in popularity at a tremendous rate in the last 10 years: just around the time that the technology for easy reproduction became widely available locally.
It was about two decade ago, with the easy availability of record copying technology, we saw an emerging music piracy industry. It was also about a decade ago that we saw the emergence of a new type of artiste; the artiste who had a mass appeal among young people who referred to themselves as ‘ghetto people’. By their very name these music lovers proclaimed that they did not have the money to buy ‘legitimate’ music. They listened to the radio, went to the dancehall and bought pirated music when they could afford it.
Artistes like Lil Rick, MADD Entertainment and Peter Ram, Biggie Ire, and Red Plastic Bag made music for the ghetto people, so did top Bands Square One and krosfyah and their popularity was bolstered by the easy availability of their music bought from the music pirates. Pirates helped in no small part to make the emerging ‘ghetto music’ grow in popularity and go mainstream.
I want to suggest that without the part played by the pirates in this early stage this new and growing appeal of local music locally and in the Bajan diaspora was as a result of the easy availability of the music at a reasonable price! “First I heard my song on the streets, then in the dance and radio, now I am booked for the season” remarked one artiste.
People aren't buying pirated music because they don't like music and want to hurt the artiste --they're buying it because they can't get enough of it. Somehow, the music industry needs to harness that love and turn it into cash. They can start doing so by looking at the price of a pirated CD and acknowledging that that is the ‘market value’ of a CD. Put in another way, the price of a pirated CD is the price that is acceptable to the broad mass of people.
The challenge today for the local music industry is to acknowledge that it is the pirates who first saw the impact that the new music could have and that they too made an investment to grow that emerging market. Now that the market is substantial the ‘legitimate’ music industry wants to kill the goose.
The music industry needs to rethink their own operating costs and tailor their operations so that their CDs can be produced to suit the pockets of the buying public. They may just find out that in doing so the CD buying public would grow to the extent that the profit margins would make the industry sustainable once more.
It is time for more innovative thinking in the music industry. Make your product more affordable, in the big picture it’s the number of “Legitimate” unites you sell locally. The music industry must study how the pirate thinks and how he operates. It may prove to be a useful tool in reclaiming their economic rights in the music.
Michael Murray
Keep the Faith.
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