Last night, I read an article about Google’s attempt to make a foot print in China, the largest up and coming consumer nation. Goolge will offer one million music free downloads to the people living in China with an IP originating from China. If you are not living in China, I guess you are out of luck. They will generate revenue through advertisements as people download the music by visiting the website. This is awesome but I don’t think this will do anything about combating piracy in China, where supposedly, 90% of all music is obtained illegally.
The funny thing to me is that music artists cry about the fact that making music is unprofitable. Some may even give up making music. Sure, piracy is bad but don’t musicians do it for the love and talent? If your music is highly downloaded, it should be a positive no matter what because you will gain celebrity status as well as have more exposure. Now, I’m not in the music industry but I would think these record labels have cash and will pay for talent. At the same time, what is unprofitable? These days with the economy being in a recession, its obvious that “unprofitable” does not mean making no profit. It just means less profit to the greedy bastards on top. Even at my company, which expects us to grow our sales by 40% in profit is stunting our growth with these unattainable goals.
Now, here’s my recommendation for all aspiring music artists that feel they should stop making music because its unprofitable. Get yourself a marketing manager that can help sell… You, the product. Creating your music is just your avenue outlet to getting a message out to the masses. Once your in the public eye, you are able to sell tickets for your concerts or merchandise related to your music. If your talented enough or if your producing music worthwhile, people will pay for your stuff and go to your shows.
I swear, the reason for so much downloading of music, movies and software out there is because there is a ton of crap out there. Why would I pay for a full album if I know there is only one song I like? Same goes for movies, trailers make them more appealing then they really are and sometimes, its just not worth the price of admission. Software is another thing; I understand the need to release a new version but sometimes, it really is not all that worthwhile to pay for minor upgrades from version to version.
Now go check out this list of music worth buying.