If you like the song, support the artist and buy the record!
Oh wait, you can’t, because the Cesarez record, for example, has been out of print for 26 years. A secondhand copy of the 12″ was sold on eBay earlier this year for US $50. The artist, label, and publisher aren’t entitled to any of that money, due to the “first sale” doctrine of copyright law, which is as it should be.
The only way anyone would even know that these tracks might have a market for a reissue is for savvy A&R people to do research and find out what the DJs are playing, what’s hot in niche radio markets, what the critics are playing for each other, what’s being shared on the ’net, what’s being talked about and posted in the blogs.
Well, we are right here, and we are doing this work for you for free.
So...
Attention labels, artists, and publishers: Music bloggers, including those who provide audio downloads, are your
free market research services and your
free publicity hounds. We tell you which tracks to remaster and reissue. We’re the tastemakers. We generate buzz in niche markets. We are part of the
new face of radio.
People
are willing to pay for
good music, if only you’d make it available for fair prices, without a handover of personal information! Stop holding music for ransom. Accept the reality that
all music is making its way into the underground distribution networks. Accept the reality that people who download music with no intention of ever paying for it
wouldn’t have paid for it anyway; they would’ve bought a secondhand copy, copied it from some other source, heard inferior-quality clips on radio or in DJ sets, or simply gone without. Accept the reality that
peer-to-peer sharing and direct downloading is the new radio; people try out tracks en masse and discard what they don’t want, and re-acquire “legally” what they can, depending on how convenient it is and how much it costs.
You’ll never eliminate the underground market, and you’ll never completely monetize it. But right now, you’re not getting
anything out of it. Free publicity is going completely to waste. You probably didn't even know until now that your deep catalog music, which you thought no one cared about anymore, is generating interest again. It could be reissued in a limited edition physical media, and sold digitally through a site like juno.co.uk, netting you at least
some income,
even while it’s simultaneously freely available elsewhere. You could even ask music bloggers to take their clips offline once you’ve made the reissues available, and you'd be surprised that
most of them would oblige because they
want to support you.
But instead, you’re committed to letting the music languish in your archives, lamenting the fact that people aren’t paying you a living wage each & every time they copy & distribute their mediocre “rips” in the secondhand & digital sharing marketplace, angry that bloggers didn’t ask your permission even though they had naturally feared you would’ve come after them or placed unreasonable limitations on them.
It’s your choice. Do you want a piece of the action or not?
Get on board and take advantage of the market and services that are right here in front of your eyes. Reissue lost tracks. Contact music bloggers to ask them to talk about your music, post free tracks, and direct folks to your authorized distributors, rather than ordering them to cease & desist.
We are not your enemy.
And here are some links for further research:
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