A composer’s ability to sustain a livelihood from the
collection of mechanical royalties remains in serious doubt.
Recent studies released in Australia indicate that 1 in 5
people are most likely to illegally download music from the Internet or share
files from other illegal sources.
If we delve deeper into this study, it has been revealed
that 30% of these people earn in excess of $100,000.00 per annum and almost
half of the study group are less than 30 years old.
This shift in consumer sentiment towards not paying for
music suggests that the 18-35 age group continue to love music and they
certainly have the financial resources to acquire music, however they are
merely reacting to a changing culture in the marketplace. It’s very easy to
forget that the first instances of “pirated” on-line music occurred more than
15 years ago, thus the youth market know no other way than to acquire music on
a free basis.
In Australia ,
the physical music retailer almost ceases to exist, other than corporate models
which aggregate DVDs, computers, televisions and phone technology for retail
sale. As it stands, the range of recorded music for physical sale is limited to
known artists, thus emerging artists have an extremely low success rate of
gaining an audience in this manner.
Whether we like it or not, music composers are compelled to
“give away” their work with respect to the traditional retail sense, on the
hope that an audience is gained via touring, cyberspace or television/ movie
licensing.
It’s a lot of money to forgo, however you can’t fight
progress…
