Indie Music Label Admitted Piracy Promotes Artists

[Guest Immortallegend]

“UP!UP!UP! music” (Russia) is a music label that collaborates with
numerous indie musicians and bands and presents actual and trendy music
all over the world. Its founder, Ivan Zhbanov, better known in the music
circles as DJ Imago, gave a lecture last weekend on the topic of
artists and labels cooperation in the modern reality. During the
lecture, he admitted that artists should allow pirates to distribute
their works for free to become known and promoted.

Imago started his lecture with explanation of his mission in the music
industry. He believes that too much music of poor quality is produced in
Russia today. Worse still, this music becomes very popular, because
people only listen what the largest music labels promote on the radio
and TV. There are a few exceptions, of course, but the trend is clear:
good music remains unknown because it only exists on the level its
creators can afford – i.e., in social networks and streaming services
which don’t monetize it.

Everyone in Russia would agree that the largest music archive in the
country (or in the former USSR for that matter) is social network
Vkontakte (InTouch). Everyone streams music and video from there, and
many people only register there to do so, as it’s much easier than to
install BitTorrent client and look for links on the trackers. Vkontakte
has everything you want to listen and watch, but it is illegal. A couple
of famous Russian musicians have already sued the network and got their
millions of rubles, but the founder of Vkontakte, Pavel Durov, is a man
of humor. He removed all their songs from the network as they asked and
replaced them with the message: “The track was removed due to lack of
cultural values”.

The problem is that Vkontakte doesn’t allow monetization of your
content, while remaining a strong promotion tool. Any live performance
has its “event” page on the network, and majority of them don’t
advertise in other forms at all, because billboards and radio
commercials cost money which indie musicians don’t have. Imago explained
that Russia lacks platforms that could allow musicians earn money for
their works. However, Russia was lucky enough to get iTunes Store a few
months ago, and price of music is affordable there – you can get an
album for a couple dollars and it’s absolutely legal. The country’s
largest search engine, Yandex, has also started its own music streaming
service, where users don’t pay anything, but the creators get 1 cent for
15 streamed songs. It’s not big money, but still something to start
with. Both of the services are new for Russian artists, but the
musicians signed with UP!UP!UP! label already have their works sold in
iTunes and streamed on Yandex. Imago promised to announce how much they
earned in a few months.



In the meantime, the main source of revenue for indie musicians remains
live performances. The scheme is easy: you release a new track, upload
it to Vkontakte on your page, get a hundred likes and announce an event
to support it. Those who liked the track will come to listen to it live
and you can get your money. That’s how Felix Bondarev, a young but
talented musician from Estonia who signed with UP!UP!UP! does it – the
23-years-old guy has already released around 35 albums by his own,
participated in recording of the albums of the US bands The Brian
Jonestown Massacre and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, and toured with
one of the most famous Russian bands Mumiy Troll. At the moment, Felix
sometimes has no money to pay his rent, but hopefully the indie label
will help him monetize his numerous works through the above mentioned
services.

The conclusion of the lecture is clear: music should be affordable, and
the artists should cooperate with both the labels and the audience to
make it happen. At the moment, free distribution of music remains a
strong promotional tool. But that’s all about Russia, because nobody
abroad would buy music with incomprehensible lyrics in Russian. What do
you think? Would you pay for an album of, say, Sansara band which is now
sold on iTunes?