Creating sustainability for musical production
“Never in history music has been able to get so far, geographically, as now.”, says Ronaldo Lemos, law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas law school in Rio de Janeiro, head of Creative Commons Brazil and chairman of iCommons, at a fair music discussion at Ars Electronica in Linz in September. By this Lemos means that the internet and digital technologies enabled the spread of music globally in a simple, cheap and fast way. This technological change leads to societal changes according to art and culture.
To give an example Ronaldo Lemos describes the scene of Tecno Brega in Brazil. Tecno Brega is a mix between an 80s beat with very romantic music, which is great for dancing together and therefore extremely popular in Brazil, especially in the north. The Tecno Brega scene releases around 400 new CDs every year and the so called Sound System Parties are crowded every weekend. Sony BMG, the largest music label in Brazil, in 2006 only released 13 CDs of brazilian music, Ronaldo Lemos remarks.
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Tecno Brega is popular, although CDs are not available at record stores, but are only sold by street vendors. The artists themselves give their music to the street vendors to copy, because the more CDs the vendors sell, the more popular the music gets, the more people come to the sound system parties - and that’s where the artists earn money. After the parties they sell their CDs directly to the fans for a higher price - the presence of the artist adds to the value.
“These artists make money by building a community of fans.”, Ronaldo Lemos says, “and if you do this you are economically viable no matter what technological changes come.”
But the Tecno Brega scene in the north of Brazil is not a single phenomenon, Lemos says. There are similar developments in other countries. Lemos mentions the Cuduru in Angola, the Cumbia in Mexico, Musicas de Fusion in Colombia or the mix tape markets in London or New York. “For the first time there has been an autonomous network that is creating sustainability for musical production.”, says Lemos.
