Why Piracy is Perpetuating Plastic Pop

Reading this article by Helienne Lindvall I realised piracy is a key issue in the music industry, and is something we need to take into account when constructing our product next year.
The new dilemma of fans unwillingness to pay for music has destroyed creating a "rock'n'roll revolution" and has instead produced a continuous stream of assembly-line artists.

Lars Ulrich and his band Metallica sued the illegal music sharer Napster after discovering the vast amount of free downloads of their music. They experienced a massive public backlash for suing and lost a lot of fans and respect! However a few years later Ulrich seems to have 'come to terms' with downloading free music and describes it as 'awesome' as fans explain this is the only way they could find and discover bands they like.




Ever since this event artists have been scared to speak out about their objection to free downloading in fear of public abuse. However Lily Allen was prepared to, and gave a dig at older artists who had been very successful, saying it was easy for them to make money from the music industry. She argued that for young artists like her, would never get a chance to make a living out of music. After this attack, she was bombarded this hate from the public, even some death threats, forcing her to remove her website!



There has been a lot of concern for the future of young musicians from artists who thrived before the digital age of free downloading. If young musicians do not fit the stereotypical pop-star formulae that is the X-Factor mould, they will struggle to succeed in this harsh industry.
Massive Attack who have been active since 1987 expressed to the BBC how frightening it was to actually see the vast amount of downloads on unlicensed sites; most being 25,000 per site! They believe that that could destroy their whole profit and living, and in the future it will only get worse; eventually cheapening music.




Even Noel Gallagher expresses his frustration with the consumer who demands for their free music on the internet to download. He explains it cost him a quarter of a million pounds to make it, out of his own pocket as he's on his own record label. He believes this is why tours are becoming so long, artists are forced to drag it out even more just to gain profit as records get more expensive to make and less people buy them, his tour being a year and four months!

Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins believes that due to technology now offering the choice of people not paying for music, the music culture has been turned into a service culture. Artists are no longer appreciated as much and, he believes now they are forced to beg for attention and plead for their fans to buy their album. However Corgan stresses that it is not even the price that puts fan's off buying their music, the general person no longer believes in making that purchase, no matter the price. The type of artists have also changed into being ready made manufactured, commercial bands; Corgan believing that if he was to be manufactured they would chose someone else with straight teeth, better attitude and palatable music to a wider audience.


Taking all of this into account I believe we need to be very cautious when creating our product; being our artist, song and style of music video. I think the type of artist we will create will appeal to a wide variety of fans; not just being mainstream pop, but also other genres. I think they will still be suseptable to their music being illegally downloaded as this is now the case with almost all artists. I think the only way people are attracted to paying for music, is when they enjoy the whole album and will feel more inclined to invest in the whole package of songs. Therefore I will try to create an artist who is not just a one hit wonder, but will have a good selection of songs in an album that people are more attracted to buy.