DJs on piracy and digital music distribution

Welove-music has interviewed a number of dj’s and label owners on Ibiza this summer. They explain how the internet has caused a revolution in the world of music and what their thoughts are on downloading and music piracy. 

Love for the music

Independent dance labels aren’t run under tight business models to capitalize on music, but rather come from love for music and are run by friends and family. Running an independent music label nowadays is not enough to make ends meet. A lot of private money goes into the label. Even if you are creatively successful that does not automatically mean that you are successful commercially. Jesse Rose doesn’t have a business plan behind his music, he just wants his music to be heard. "If you can distribute music for free and find a way to earn some money to pay the people in the office, that’s fine," says Rose.

Digital music distribution

Nowadays you no longer have to go through crates in music shops, but you listen to music through weblogs, YouTube and streaming sites. Kieran Hebden likes it that a lot of dj’s just mail each other their music, without dj promo agency's getting in between. You just mail it to as many people as possible. It’s easy to get new music very fast.

One advantage of digital music distribution is that you no longer have to judge new music on its cover, say Meikle and MacMillan. At the same time this is also a disadvantage, since you have to listen to every single track now. That takes time, but gives you more chance to find new things. Rose notes that this also means that tracks can get lost in the masses. 

New techniques are enabling more people to make professional music. You no longer need to hire an expensive studio and equipment. That frees artists from labels or record companies and leads to a greater supply of new artists. That also means that record companies no longer filter new releases on quality. You are your own quality filter now.

Downloading & Piracy

“Everything is overhyped now”, says Rose. He has recently started a new label and deliberately no longer gives out promos (promotional prereleases for a new songs sent out for screening purposes to radio stations, reviewers, etc.). Several media directly headlined that Rose wanted to fight piracy, but that is nonsense, says Rose. "Once a song is released, it can be pirated”. Rose doesn’t care about piracy. "Bootleg my label, I do not care," says Rose. 

The reason Rose's new label is no longer doing promo's is because they only want to sell physical records. A new song is now out on only 200 vinyl records. And there will be no more, even if people ask for it. This seems like a smart move; this way Rose addresses both the need for exclusiveness and nostalgia in true music fans, those who want the original and get a kick out of finding a new record that others haven’t found yet or that hasn’t been written about yet.

Hebden is actually buying (physical) records again every week. If he doesn't buy the new records on the day they come out, they’re sold out and he has to turn to resells from eBay, which is very expensive. Moreover he finds "the more people that have downloaded my music, or shared it, the more records I’ve sold and things are taking off. You can look at [piracy] as a wrong thing, but if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, it's not worth worrying about so much and is actually getting my music out there”, says Hebden. 

See more of the interviews with Stuart MacMillan & Order Meikle of Slam / Soma Recordings, DJ Hell International DJ Gigolo Recordings, Jess Rose Made to Play / Play It Down Recordings, Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Pete Herbert, Andy Wilson of Ibiza Sonica Radio and Pier Bucci.

Source: welove-music.com