Illicit Promo

Nas - Thief's Theme

“At least they’re playing me”…  Yap, they playing you alright!

I was googling myself the other day, and I found another website that’s ripped my songs from YouTube and are hosting them for download. Now I don’t know if I should be pissed or flattered by the move. This is the third website I’ve identified this year and it got me asking myself how I really feel about it.

See from an artist's point of view you feel like they should at least let a brother hold something (get reimbursed) for providing content on their site. While on the other hand they’re opening up my music to a wider audience because, not everyone depends on YouTube or soundcloud for new music. You know the crowd that prefers mp3s sites that are light and have few adverts on them; sites that can be accessed by low end phones.

I know you’re shaking your head going like “dude seriously, that’s piracy!” I know, I know, but this is where technology has got us. The audience wants to be feed constantly with new content. I’m a fun too and sometimes I get pissed when my favorite artist delays for years on their next album release. That’s where listening to different genres helps, it takes the anxiety away for a while, or maybe just transfers it off to other artists’ (coughs* Donell  Jones… haha).

Now back to the promo part. I have always thought our payment scheme for those in the arts needs to change. I think we should put artists who produce content on a regular basis on a monthly salary scheme so that even if someone hosts my music online I won’t feel bad about it, because there's a universal structure set up to ensure I am compensated for my craft.

Think about it for a second, if an artist is guaranteed a steady stream of revenue, as long as he or she is producing content, then all he has to worry about is focusing on creating more work. We start with a provincial, county or state structure, a country one then a continental one and last a universal one. Each of these sets up a fund and the provincial, state or county agency is held responsible for disbursing the funds directly to the artist.

Here it goes; the world sets up a universal artists fund of x amount where organizations from different continents collect a predetermined amount as a pool, like how governments distribute to different states or counties according to their population and needs. Then from the continents it goes to the countries and trickles down as previously stated to the artists. Only thing to worry about here is corruption and favoritism which as a species we seriously need to deal with for an idea like this to really work. 

Sound like communism? Nah, this idea is just for audio, video and literature content. We are, in a way making artwork free to tackle piracy, but letting the artist still earn from features, performances and other revenue streams. Obviously with this scheme, you don’t expect everyone to receive the same amount continent to continent because of the difference in strength of their entertainment industries. But we can work this out in future, right?