How Embracing Piracy Jumpstarted Brazilian Music

from the oh-look-at-that... dept

One of the more amusingly wrong statements from the RIAA and its supporters is the idea that piracy is killing the music industry. Those who say that without being able to sell music there would be less music out there are flat out wrong, and we seem to see more proof of it every day. There's more music being produced today than ever before and it's often because of file sharing -- the very thing the industry honchos want you to believe is killing the industry. For natural experiments, we've pointed in the past to places like China and Jamaica. In China, where "piracy" is rampant, the music industry is thriving. Musicians have learned to use the piracy to help promote themselves so they can sell more concert tickets at higher prices. They also realized that companies would often pay for the creation of new music, so that it could be used to boost brand recognition of products. Meanwhile, in Jamaica, musicians competed to make better versions of songs, using the same "riddims," but adding their own singing over them. While in an RIAA-inspired world, the "riddim" creators would get upset, in Jamaica it's been great for them. The most popular riddims turn their creators into stars who are in high demand to create new riddims from musicians who are eager to be the first to create their own songs on top of the new riddims from the hottest riddim creators.

Now it looks like we can add Brazil to the list of natural examples. There, the tecnobrega music scene is on fire thanks to musicians embracing piracy. They don't just look the other way, they actively encourage it. Musicians burn their own CDs and rush them down to street vendors, begging them to sell them (without the musicians getting any cut at all). Those musicians also upload MP3s and email them to popular DJs who make mixtapes (similar to the US hiphop mixtape scene). Just like in China, the artists realize that they need to use so-called "piracy" to help them get more publicity. "Piracy is the way to get established and get your name out. There's no way to stop it, so we're using it to our advantage," according to one tecnobrega star, Gabi Amarantos. Contrary to what the RIAA and it supporters would tell you, the lack of copyright respect hasn't hurt the tecnobrega space at all -- it's made it explode. It's allowed many more musicians to make a decent living from music than via a traditional model and it means that much more technobrega music is being produced. In other words, all the stories about how a lack of copyright creates less music are, once again, provably wrong. Yet, of course, the RIAA and its supporters will continue to repeat the lie. In fact, the National Anti-Piracy Association in Brazil says that tecnobrega is a problem because it "makes light of piracy." It's not "making light" of piracy -- it's making money from piracy.

Filed Under: brazil, music, piracy, tecnobrega
Companies: riaa