Thursday, September 21, 2006
The music business
After two weeks vacation in Portugal, I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts on today's music business, concerning mainly Portugal and Poland.

Today, as some years ago, the music industry keeps complaining that the internet, music sharing copying and other kings of piracy are ruining a once prosper industry. What they do forget is everything else that does not support music, in any format, and the artists themselves.

Music from both Poland and Portugal is not as air played as we'd all wish. BIS, Eska Rock and Trojka are some of the radios where one can listen to some new Polish music, and where of course, we won’t find any Polish Paris Hilton or Eros Ramazotti. The same would apply to such Portuguese radios as Radar, Oxigenio and Antena 3.

Even though it might seem enough to promote music, keep in mind that some of these radios only have one or 2 programmes where we can find these tunes.

Apart from this, we have the price for brand new cds. Whereas in Poland, it is possible to buy a local release by a mere 7 to 8 Eur, versus the 16 EUR for a foreign record, in Portugal sometimes, a record released by a Portuguese artist is more expensive than a foreign record, reaching sometimes an incredible 20 EUR.

For artists, not known in the market, such situation becomes one of the most difficult barriers to overcome. Not only they have to fight against the fact that their music cannot be listened anywhere, the music industry expects that such amount will be paid for a first release or an unknown record, with doubtful quality.

In Poland, fortunately, they have acknowledged that by having Polish music cheaper they can sell more, fight back the rise of piracy, and promote the artists as well.

But not only is the music industry to blame.

When back in Lisbon, I had the chance to see Spartak live in concert. I arranged with some friends to see this concert but unfortunately, once we got to this venue, 30min later than its supposed starting time, not only the room was empty, as no one from the band had arrived. These arrived around 1h30m later than what was said to be the starting time, and still, we were offered an extra 30 minutes waiting time.

Don’t know whose fault it is, but the band did not even apologize for such a delay. Perhaps, it has become a common practice. After all, a concert that should start at 23h30, started at 01h30!!!!!!

With such situations, is anyone in condition to complain that the music business is not going as expected?
posted by SKL @ 2:33 PM  
1 Comments:

  • At 4:36 AM, Blogger Paulo para todas as obras said…

    Primeiro: parabéns pelo blog!

    Descobri recentemente o blog e parece-me uma excelente ideia a de divulgar e comparar as cenas musicais de Portugal e afins e da Polónia.

    Eu também já passei uns tempos pela europa central, mais concretamente Rep. Checa, tendo,nessa ocasião,tido a possibilidade de assistir a uns concertos de bandas locais - algumas mais famosas do que outras, desde a nova banda do gajo dos Ecstasy of Saint Theresa a uns putos quaisquer muito bebedos a tentar fazer o máximo noise que podiam. Também vi alguns na Polónia, mas não dá para comparar muito, mas uma das coisas que notei é que aí é capaz de haver um maior fervor e participação nas coisas que se fazem e na forma como os concertos decorrem. Aqui por Portugal os concertos andam um pouco "calmitos" de mais, salvo algumas excepções - sábado d3ö @ Lounge e claro, os grandes Bunnyranch e companhia de coimbra, já agora o concerto no mercado foi fixe e o novo álbum promete. Não se sente tanta garra.

    Segundo: quanto aos horários, eu acho que as coisas andam a melhorar, especialmente em alguns concertos que vou ver no clube mercado ou na ZDB em que as coisas tendem a começar a horas (horas é com um atraso de 30 minutos).

    Terceiro: As bandas e os preços dos cds, é bem verdade o que dizes, mas também andam por aí bons exemplos que tentam contornar esse problemas, por exemplo os d3ö com a edição de ep's ao preço de oito euros, ou o Old Jerusalem - e os artistas da Borland em geral - com edições a 12 euros. Aliás, muitas veses o problema está nas lojas retalhistas, uma vez que já encontrei o último cd de Tiger Man a 13€ e a 19€ em lojas diferentes do mesmo grupo françes.

    Bons concertos e continuação de bom trabalho!

     
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