Last tuesday I got in touch with discographical environment for the first time. I was contacted by VideoRadio, an indie label whom I sent my demo CD some weeks ago. Since they seemed very interested in my music we fixed a meeting in their studio in order to know each other.
Now I should to make a short digression about VideoRadio’s history. It was found in 1985 by Giuseppe Aleo, a drummer fairly famous in the italian prog scene of the ‘70. He was member of different bands: Il Sigillo di Horus and I Signori della Galassia .
Now let’s get back to the present times. Unfortunately the berth I slept in the train was not very comfortable. Nevertherless I got to VideoRadio studios, not very far from the station, very soon in the morning. With Giuseppe we get immediately both human and musical feeling, certainly due to our common musical backgrounds.
As in Bologna with Medimond, artistic and dreaming talks were soon left behind in favour of modern discographic market issues. Publishing an album is not a problem in itself. The real problem is creating a winning project in term of promotion and distribution. The naked truth is that nowadays record selling rates have dramatically fallen down. The main reason is certainly the increasing widespread of peer-to-peer programs on the Internet that allow free download of mp3.
“Let the one without sin cast the first stone…”
The illegal download phenomenon seems not to get rest. Police has very poor means to contrast this globalized habit of PC users. They have not enough resources to control every file being shared between users on the net. The major effort are then focused on more serious crimes like online pedopornography. So illegal mp3 download is now considered as a venial sin in the common sense. However copyright protection laws continue to be violate every second.
The second reason of current musical market crisis is more sociological. Most of record buyers are teenagers. So what are their tastes ? Is it true that we have impose them a dominant dis-culture made of reality shows, fake quarelling, gossip, paparazzi and bullism shooted with modern videophones ?
Giuseppe said something like: “Great artist of the past like Battisti and Dalla, would starve if they were born in these days”. Nobody can prove this statement, anyway I refuse to give up my personal struggle to change the italian culture…
I wonder what could be possible countermeasures to the status quo. The first the comes in my mind is to view Internet not as a threat but as an opportunity. Having a website including a download by payment mechanism (e.g. Paypal) is a must either for labels and artists, even if they have full access to traditional means of distribution.
A second countermeasure is obviously playing live. Not considering the earning for tickets, what is more important for both the artist and the label are the rights paid by the owner of pub (or whatever) to SIAE (the italian branch of CISAC). In this way the label can blanket the initial investment made to publish the record.
A third way, fairly unusual but certainly smart, is to find a sponsor willing to finance your project buying a number of copies of your CD. Certainly you can’t hope to find a real Mecenate. However economical advantages for a sponsor are clear. First of all fiscally the V.A.T can be detracted. Moreover, putting its logo on your CD the sponsor can exploit the artistic product for its own promotional aims.
In conclusion I can say that this meeting with Giuseppe Aleo cleared me certain aspects of discographical market that I didn’t know well. It was a positive experience and probably we will start soon a collaboration. Well, unless tomorrow someone will knock at my door with a proposal that cannot be refused. Who knows…
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