BY HARPZ
When I was a child, I knew nothing about technology, never knew what the Internet was and most certainly didn’t have a clue what downloading even meant. As I grew older, I learnt how to use a computer and as they say ‘the rest is history’. Once you become comfortable in using something on a daily basis, you begin to discover more and more.
The Internet is an endless world and will probably only continue to grow and expand. Although there are many pro’s on having access to the Internet there are also many downsides to it too. When it comes to music, the Internet can be a very cruel friend. It can take over your motive, drain your energy and also drag your business down. I guess what I am really trying to say is, it can change your perception of your career, it can make you feel as though you are wasting your time and it can also turn out to be the main cause as to why your making a loss.
Online streaming has become so popular over the years and it seems the more and more people do it, the more and more sales go down. I’m not just talking about music, it tends to happen in almost everything such as films, programmes even sports!
However, focusing more on the musical side of things, it’s an extremely dangerous trap to fall into. Artists within the Bhangra industry, who may not even be mainstream, probably struggle the most. This is because it is now becoming almost a trend! People are discovering ways of finding music online and sometimes before it’s even been released, which leads them to not having to purchase the legit material, simply because they don’t need to! It almost becomes a ‘waste of money’ type of thing. If it’s there to see and hear for free, why take out the time to download it?
I spoke to MC Special, a very successful producer within the Bhangra scene who’s been around for many years. I asked him ‘What his take was on online streaming and if he feels it has made a massive impact on sales’
MC Special quotes: ‘’I totally agree on this topic! Streaming has caused a massive difference in sales. It was just hard enough when people were downloading tracks. However, got to look on the positive side to it aswell that streaming is the way forward. It’s just a shame because download charts do not take this into account. So this causes issues and people feel it has not done that well. I personally feel charts somehow need to find out popular streaming tracks and how many times they are getting played which would probably help artists! Oh and they need to pay us more for streaming! Lol.’’
Picking on the point of what MC Special stated about people not knowing whether or not a track has done well, clearly seems to be the problem. It’s quite a sad story for artists and producers who are putting in so much time and effort into their work and then not really receiving the credit their due. Maybe there should be a system put into place where people can find out if streaming is occurring and maybe finding a way to block that. It seems that is the only way this problem can be solved.
On the other hand, there was a distraction put into place a couple of years back to stop people from downloading or illegally ripping music from sites such as Youtube, by inserting short voice-overs on top of tracks that said ‘’Available now on iTunes’’. This was to try and annoy listeners whilst streaming online or attempting to download the material by having to listen to the voice over every minute or so through out the track. It was obviously put there to push people to download the material legally and possibly make a change in online sales. But did this really help? Hmmmm, not quite sure!
MY VERDICT:
I suppose the Internet really is the way forward and I won’t be surprised if we end up having robots doing all the work for us within the next 20 years!! I think online streaming is unfortunately going to be an on going habit for some. If it’s available and accessible to do this then I can’t see things changing or stopping people from doing so. If it wasn’t there for people to do in the first place, then maybe sales would boost excessively. Maybe the people behind the downloading system online need to bring out a new venture to try prevent this from happening. Otherwise, to be quite frank, I think the music industry is definitely going to suffer and will have to try make money alternatively. Then again, if you’re an extremely talented artist, am sure you can find ways of making up for the lack of sales online. Good Luck!
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