I just wanted to point to the fact that I really DO believe in the power of the new media. I believe that leaking the album is in fact the best shot we have, and by far, I don’t mean it in a bad way, the internet is a very powerful tool and I intend to used it as much as I can. Of course, this is not a shared thought in the band, but I’m sure they’ll come around eventually. But I don’t think I made that clear on the last post. So… moving on…
As a friend always says: “music is culture, and it has to be shared”
A few days ago I was reading about Sicko, the new movie from Michael Moore (it’s great, I totally recommend it), and how it had a great revenue from the box office even when it got entirely leaked weeks after its arrival on theaters. The whole projection they had for the box office was reached and it had already been seen by thousands of people in the U. S. Is this luck?
I believe music can achieve the same results, and it can get a lot better. I think today we suffer from what I call “disposable music”, and while I was talking to a friend about this he said something you’ll find very interesting:
In the 80’s, you listened to the radio. Artists were presented there, along with their hits. If the band was lucky (or big) enough you could find the record in stores, so if you really liked it, you could go and purchase it. Then became the ritual of listening it a thousand times if it was necessary while reading the box again and again until you learned the lyrics for you favorite song. Actually, listening to the record in your house needed of some sort of attention and time. Today, we can download (legally or illegally) hundreds of songs. If you really are into music, you can get from 5 to 10 records every week. All of them new. If you are a bit obsessed maybe more, who knows, but the fact is that most of this music you’ll probably hear just 1 or 2 times. If you really really like one song maybe you’ll stick to it for around a month or so. And all of this music is never to return to your playlists.
So what’s the point with selling records these days? As Rafa J. pointed out on his comment in the last post, the CD format is due to disappear very soon, I mean, we already know that iTunes is the third largest music retailer in the U. S.
But… and there is always a but… Mexico is not quite the same as other countries. Here is a funny example. We have this band called Porter. This guys went from zero to famous with just one song and this song wasn’t even published when it suddenly got some serious heavy rotation (as requested by listeners) on the radio. So, they started playing live a lot around the country (still without any published song) and several months later they decide to make their record by themselves, and came out with a relatively small number of them to sell it on venues. Early this year we had the Vive Latino 2007 festival and they sold 4, 500 copies of their newest material (second album) that day. They sold it “small”, and now, you can find pirate copies in every corner of the city and of course on every peer-to-peer network.
When Moby released “Play” in 1999 it became the first record ever to license each and every track on it. This of course gave him a significant amount of money that didn’t came from the record sales. It was mind opener for a lot of artists that were searching for different ways of commercializing their music. Moby managed to put his songs in several movies, television shows and commercials, and this helped of course to keep the record on the charts for years after the release. It has sold over ten million copies worldwide.
So, pointing the obvious, I think the best way of succeeding in the music biz is to get your songs heard as much as you can without worrying about the money at least until you are known. Licensing over songs is a great opportunity to earn some money and get heard. At the same time, if you choose not to leak your songs, you can always use other online alternatives like WE7, Amie Street, GoodStorm Music, websites like MySpace and other social networks, and of course Creative Commons (here is a post I made about this).
Since this blog is read only by 3 people I’ll give you a special gift 
Hope you like it!
P. D. Recently two torrent trackers were shut down in Spain, and their founders ended up in jail for copyright infringements. According to the authorities, they are responsible for a loss of 500, 000 €
A true act of ignorance if you ask me, some people just don’t get it.
Link: BitTorrent Sites Shut Down, Admins Arrested
WHAT TO DO NOW?