Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

langelgjm writes "When people talk about the failing business model of the traditional record company, they often only offer vague suggestions as to how things would work otherwise. But a concrete example of a music scene that thrives on piracy is to be found in Brazil, in the form of tecnobrega. From the article: 'While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs, tecnobrega artists see counterfeiters as key to their success ... Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation, an elite Rio de Janeiro think tank and research center, says tecnobrega and other movements like it represent a new business model for the digital era, where music is transformed from a good to a service.'"

Welcome to 2006

Looks like someone finally got around to watching Steal This Film [stealthisfilm.com].

=Smidge=

brazil?

my question is why "Brazil" is in the title. the us, maybe, but brazil?

Re:brazil?

they'd just make sure that anything sold at their concerts had their logo on it.

Even the Blotters ?!?

don'tdownloadthissong

or weird al's "Don't Download this Song", which can be found on his website. i think it's the best media out there that shows the consequences.

tecnobrega , is it for everyone

The concept of tecnobrega as discussed in the article is an interesting one. If you are planning on being a stage band and making your money off of the shows you perform then it's great. However what happens if that's not our thing. For a hugely sucesful artist who's shows are sold out they are being stolen from with no added benefit at all. This "tecnobrega" only favours the new or the unsuccesful.

Re:tecnobrega , is it for everyone

If "your thing" is not practicing your craft, and is instead to try to get us to pay you in perpetuity for the favor of having once played some music, go fuck yourself. You need to earn your money just like everyone else. You earn it by doing something. That something can certainly be performing music. I truly enjoy live music. I pay a lot of money for concert tickets. I buy SWAG at the shows.

I wish I could just sit back and let everyone who read my specs pay me a royalty for the favor of doing my job. Instead I have to produce new content. I could do this by charging per document I PRODUCE, but I choose instead to be an employee. Doesn't really change the model, though, to remain an employee, I must continue to produce useful work. Otherwise they'll show me the door.

Being and artsy fuck doesn't exempt you from needing to contribute.

Re:tecnobrega , is it for everyone

You need to earn your money just like everyone else

It's a shame you can't get your head around the fact that some performances take years of prep and production work, and involve poeple who can only come together in the studio or in some other collaborative manner. Such recordings have plenty of audience interest, and involve material that can never provide income for the performers as they tour bars or concert halls selling t-shirts and getting a cut of the beer gross.

There ARE people who want to purchase a compilation of recordings from over time, or ensemble pieces that involved many studio sessions to create. They WANT the artists to be able to dedicate their time (and thus derive their income from) sales after the fact of doing that hard work. I don't want your desire to have that recording for free to prevent me from being able to purchase such recordings. But the sentiment that such recordinds should be fair game for ripping off because you'd rather suck down smoke or stand in line to take a piss at a concert venue is a false dichotomy. If you think a band can make a good living by giving away their work, and charging you for tickets and bumper stickers, great. I'm sure you can persuade them all to pursue that approach. But that has nothing to do with whether or not its up to YOU spread a studio work around to 100,000 of your very best personal, and completely anonymous, friends.

Don't like musicians and filmakers who choose to work FIRST and entertain their audience afterwards? Then don't do business with those people. Why are you ranting? Just do business with people who don't want to charge you any money for their studio work, and you'll both be happy. Leave the people who want to see films made or other long-term projects evolve do what they want. You can just ignore it. Except you can't, because you want those things too, you just want to be entertained for free.

GCBC

Looks like someone finally got a chance to see "Good Copy, Bad Copy".
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7727 [creativecommons.org]

"vague suggestions", my shiny metal a$$

You can't make money giving away music...except for taper/trader friendly bands like the Grateful Dead. And I doubt 50 Cent got any royalties from mix tapes with his early stuff, but the bling comes from somewhere.

It's kinda like saying, everyone complains about Microsoft but there are only vague suggestions about alternatives.

Tanstaafl

The tendency for technology to provide support for basic producers (music, videos, EFF, etc) is wonderful. It is also very threatening for large organizations based on the scarcity principles of "old" economics.

Seems like its time to re-read my dog-eared copy of Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (Heinlein).

Maybe we are getting closer to the future after all.

Yes, actually. The cat does "got my tongue."

This is an excellent example of how what we think of as ethical derives not from a god, but rather from evolved justifications of behavior. There's a mighty struggle going on to re-define taking music without the author's permission as ethical, based on the ego-soothing concepts that it's really in their interest.

Misleading quote

From the article: 'While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs ...

Who are these musicians who "control the sale of their songs?"

Documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy"

The well researched Danish Documentary(the Docu is spoken in English though) Good Copy Bad Copy [thepiratebay.org]
covered the Brazilian tecno brega movement and other examples of using digital content that are not necessary legal according to the Mega Corporations of content creation. Techno brega uses alot of sampling from major recording industry material. Tecno Brega artists give their content to bootleggers to distribute throughout Brazil. The artists themselves make no money from these CD sales instead they make money by throwing parties and burning recordings of their events to people who attend.

Thepiratebay link to a torrent download of this Documentary [thepiratebay.org] (Note this torrent is legal and the Documentary makers on their website which I linked to above created this torrent)
Streaming Flash Clip of the same Documentary from Blip.tv [goodcopybadcopy.blip.tv]

ah it all makes sense now

i talk regularly in chatrooms on the p2p program soulseek. Soulseek has a massive south american userbase and I have discovered so many cool bands thanks to their members sitting in chatrooms and telling people to download their stuff

just think about how fast popularity can spread if it's not linked to monetary value

I, for one, welcome these overlords:

SELECT country_name, "Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy" FROM countries WHERE GDP_per_capita < some_limit

Before it was a good it was a service

Back before edison and all those other people figured out how to record music the musicians had to play music live.

Re:Before it was a good it was a service

See that's a common misconception. Actually Bach pioneered the micropayment financial system when he used Germany's ubiquitous surveillance to monitor and debit 5 pfennig from the bank account anyone caught humming any portion of "Christ lag in Todesbanden"

Misleading?

If the artist is giving this stuff away is it piracy?

It seems that the issue is getting a bit blurred between the concepts of giving something away and piracy.

I know it's not a popular idea but I still think that an artist should have rights to do what he wants with his creation. If they want to give it away for free to build a good fanbase that's great but that still doesn't dismiss people who are taking something without paying for it if the artist has put a price tag on it. Nor does it justify the downloading of a work even if it is offered freely from one source such as the Radiohead issue.

Proof positive the copyright regime is misguided?

This is what happens in Brazil, from the article:

While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs, tecnobrega artists see counterfeiters as key to their success. Artists, who make their money off of live shows, deliver their CDs directly to the street vendors, who determine the price that market can bear. This "mixtape" phenomenon is popular in other parts of the world, including Argentina and the United States, where it is an integral part of hip-hop.
"Piracy is the way to get established and get your name out. There's no way to stop it, so we're using it to our advantage," explains Gabi Amarantos, who frequently appears on Brazilian TV on the strength of bootleg sales of her CDs (from which artists don't get a cut).

Technically, there is no copyright infringement involved since the artists themselves allow their works to be duplicated.

What is however interesting is that this technobrega movement severely undermines one of the arguments frequently cited by the RIAA in favour of stricter copyright laws, which is that piracy undermines the ability of the music and film industries to invest in the next generation of local talent by lowering revenues from current sales.

Also from the article :

"This year the multinational record labels will only release about 40 records by Brazilian artists, while tecnobrega artists will release around 400," said Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation. "The record industry argues if intellectual property isn't protected there will be no innovation. But tecnobrega has shown that's not true."

The original intention of copyright as stated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause/ [wikipedia.org] was :

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Given that the tecnobrega movement has shown that copyright protection is not necessary to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, isn't it time to reconsider the whole basis of copyright law?

In Soviet Japan

... Manga copies Doujinshi.

In Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig describes the doujinshi (copyright-infringing comics) industry in Japan and describes how it not only fuels the market for "official" manga comics but can influence them as well.

These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are huge. More than 33,000 "circles" of creators from across Japan produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the mainstream commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously competes with that market, but there is no sustained effort by those who control the commercial manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the competition and despite the law. ...

Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in the view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga flourish.

Linky: http://www.sslug.dk/~chlor/lessig/freeculture/c-piracy.html#creators [sslug.dk]

Freeloaders ahoy in Brazil

Just so you know, nobody listens to this in major cities. I don't think this stuff is nowhere near the airwaves of major cities. It's a very low-wage kinda subculture thing and as such gets very little attention. Except where it's lumpenproletariat galore, which is basically their scene, I suppose.

"Brega" means "tacky", having extremely bad taste. Like refrigerator penguins. Like when you try to interpret a fashion trend but get it all wrong because it looks so cheap and ridiculous. Imagine rednecks, but a 1000 times worse. Definitely not mainstream. And limited to a specific region of Brazil.

Low-wage Brazilians typically don't want to pay for anything. They get tax discounts after tax discounts. A typical porter or handyman is a tax-free guy. He gets free medical services and education (which both suck, BTW...), sustained by those that are between a rock and a hard place - the middle class that does pay a hefty 37% tax on income; and the businesses, industries, etc. That's 3-4 months working for the government. Yup. Doctors, engineers, consultancy firms - anyone who's not poor. The leftist corrupt government caters to these people, giving out more government aid and tax-cuts, because then they vote for them.

So why would they pay for music? They're already a bunch of freeloaders, anyway. If they're unemployed, they just pack up and go buy contraband products in neighboring Paraguay (they have a tax-free policy on imports, I think) to resell on sidewalks. No Union protest... Just their very own tax-free shortcut to survival. This is just how their life is. How fucked up. And now some foreigners and academics are fascinated with this...LOL.

Plus, that music sucks. Real bad.

No need to look at Brazil

It's been happening here for a while. If you're a new band you can get critical acclaim and exposure at a level that wasn't possible say, fifteen years ago (unless you had a friend at Spin or RS that would do a write-up on you).

Kelefah Sanneh of the NY Times summed it up nicely in this article [nytimes.com] about Vampire Weekend [vampireweekend.com]:

For a proactive indie-rock fan in 2007 a debut album is more like an end product than a starting point. By the time that first shrink-wrapped and bar-coded CD finds its way into shops, the band will probably be old news, having suffered through many online cycles of hype and backlash. In a world that won't wait patiently for an album release date, it probably makes more sense to talk about a debut MP3, a debut YouTube appearance, a debut MySpace page.

In a sense this new state of affairs is really an old one, a throwback to the early 1960s, when concerts and singles ruled, and albums were merely compilations. And it probably makes bands (not to mention record companies) nervous: It means you can pick up fans faster, and lose them faster too.

I don't know how the economics work, but I'm sure that for certain bands, if they can give away an album to get people to come to a show, they may end up making more money that way.

Back To The Future

From the dawn of history, music has always been a service, and never a good. I don't see why the existence of ultra rich musicians should be seen as anything other than an anomaly.

This looks like...

This looks a lot like the cut-throat competition of the Jamaican recording industry until they signed the Berne convention in 1994, after that date they became irrelevant from a cultural point of view.

The real bane of brazilian musicians

While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying ...

No, I think the true bane of Brazilian musicians is the existence of this song [wikipedia.org]

American music scenes thrive on piracy

I enjoy early music, which is medieval and before classical-styled ecclesiastical music. There are some who still practice it, and having their MP3s has allowed me to know what to buy when I do place that order through the pain-in-the-ass place in Ohio that actually has some of these CDs.

There's some merit to this

Why spend thousands on schemes to protect digital music, why spend millions on promotional material?

Just post some tracks as mp3s on the website, let people copy it. Someone somewhere will buy it, you could sell the CD with a free t-shift and people would then buy it for the t-shirt.

This is how Metallica became famous, people trading their bootleg recordings of them.

In other news...

• Reinforced concrete barriers help keep skidding cars from hitting the oncoming traffic.
• Steel armor plates reduce the impact of improvised explosive devices.
• Kibbutz sets the clock based on the terrorist rocket-salvoes timings.

In other words, the presence of a work-around does not justify the actions which cause the problem, which, in this case, is "music piracy" also well known as thievery.

Exactly what it is...

music is transformed from a good to a service

Finally, someone gets it. Until the RIAA and co took over, that is exactly what music was, and is. They were trying to make it something it wasn't, which lasted for a while and is now failing. Time to get back with it and let music be what it really is.

A musician is paid for their service of performing the piece. Everything else in music (e.g. MP3s, etc.) is fair game for free trade, which in turn promotes the artist, which in turn drives performances. Break the cycle and the artists suffer.

performance = service??

You mean I would actually be paying to see and hear the performance as a service rather than treat the sequence of air compressions as a good? I mean that would be like... well, like it use to be.

Go out and see your local philharmonic. I mean if you want to pay for talent, imagine having to put on the kind of performance they do. One and a half live performances a week for half the year. Oh yeah... your "set" might include a single movement lasting over 4 hours. ("For Philip Guston", composer: Morton Feldman. Or his unrecorded six hour String Quartet No. 2, the bows are never lifted off the strings.) In general movements are longer than rock/top-40/rap and close to scores of performers are expected to play in tune and in sync. Beethoven's ninth symphony, fourth movement is 25 minutes.

Yes. it's a service. Anybody can make several "takes" and then keep only the best one to sell. The value is in the talents of the performers. That is a service.

Not piracy

Why people are calling this "piracy" when the artists themselves are handing over the originals to be copied? This is not piracy, this is free, lawful, copying.

A Gift for those who love Brazilian music

synthespian (563437) got the picture right. For those of you who love Brazilian music, here is a site where you can download rare and unprocurable music ripped from collector's original records. Ah, there is even .flac versions! http://loronix.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

New business model???

[..] new business model for the digital era, where music is transformed from a good to a service.

[ "All new is well forgotten old." Russian proverb. ]

New????? Under what kind of rock the people are living???

For ages, service model was how artists lived - by making performance and getting paid for it.

Most of classical music, paintings, sculptures were made now on whip - but after a offer from people with money.

My favorite composer J.S. Bach lived by creating music for different religious events commissioned by church.

That's how it worked since dawn of ages.

Most music sucks!

Most music is crap anyway...not worth buying, let alone downloading (especially in the US).

Definitions

It's easy to be a 'sucess' and 'thrive' - just redefine the meanings of the words to suit your situation.

making money all right...

from the article...

The best songs are played by "aparelhagens," hugely popular DJs running shows with laser displays, smoke machines and giant video monitors that alternate images of the dancing crowds with psychedelic imagery.

Uhh...is it just me or does this sound strangely like a rave?

Believe me it's pretty easy to make money at one of those.

In Brazil

IN BRAZIL, car drives on sugar cane water, stealing music make people rich, and hats go on FEET!

I for one buy more due to filesharing...

Ok, I'm not exactly a major consumer here, but before I got into music downloading I NEVER bought any CDs at all. I just listened to the radio. Of course, since I could never remember the names of the songs I liked, I never bought anything. Now, queue filesharing, just yesterday I spent some $100 on music because I couldn't be bothered trying to find hundreds of individual tracks that may or may not be of decent quality, and which may or may not be correctly labelled etc... Sure, maybe I'm not in the main target group, but I'd imagine making it easy and convenient for people to actually go legit would make a lot more sense than creating a DRM riddled hassle and threatening to sue your customers...

FYI

brega is a slang term for a whorehouse in Northeastern Brasil. fits quite nicely when discussing the RIAA.

Localized...

Like the Wiki article on technobrega says, this "style of music" is localized to the north/northeast part of Brazil. Notoriously the poorest part of Brazil. I don't think most of the population there can spend money on retail CDs (about 20 reais) when you can find pirated copies for as little as 2 reais.

Technobrega could be translated to technotrash. I must say that brega is a pretty horrible style itself, i can't imagine what technobrega must sound like :/

FYI, this is one of the most famous Brega singers in Brazil: http://images.uncyc.org/pt/1/14/Falcao.jpg [uncyc.org]
You can imagine the rest :p

Piracy to fame

Us users thought getting around to using a pricey little friendlier-than-nix system for free was a getting-away-with-it. It worked for companies who use computers because they don't have to train that much for employees and it worked too for the companies who supply companies with computers with licensed copies, ultimately it inflated Micros***t's pockets a lot than it did for everyone else.

(Piracy) worked and still works for Micro***t but that bandwagon can't carry everyone in. Any (business) model will continue work as long as only a few are engaging in it.

bane of the musicians?

While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs'

I think it's been more of bane for music executives, then musicians. Maybe the time of worldwide superstar musicians is coming to an end.(not tomorrow, but in a few years maybe) Without music industry, popularity of an artist will go back to the word of the mouth, not the amount of the money record company decides to spend on promoting a certain artist. Only word of the mouth, nowdays is more word of the blog,podcast,pitchfork(oh dear) but that's ok, maybe that's how it should be. What I am saying without music industry there won't be any massive worldwide campaigns and you won't have instant massive world superstars, cause those things cost money. There will be only local music stars, only this 'local' won't depends so much on where you live, but which part of the Internet you frequent the most.

They keep using that word....

Piracy is armed robbery at sea.

When we use their term for what is actually "copyright infringement", we allow them to make it sound worse than it is. The same goes for hacker. A hacker is someone finding elegant solutions, figuring out how things work and then improving them. We allowed the media to abuse that word to mean cyber criminal/cracker. Now we can't use the word hacker for its intended purpose without causing confusion.

Am i the only one who cares about this?

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

just because something is against the law doesn't mean that it's wrong.

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

I don't remember ever voting for the DMCA.

So only laws that you voted for apply to you?

That's not what I said. I said laws never seemed democratic, not that they don't apply. I do feel however that it's everyone duty to not follow unethical or immoral laws, and if arrested for violating those laws to take it to the highest possible court they can in the hope of getting the law overturned.

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

It's called civil disobedience. When you have a fundamental issue with a law sometimes the best way to fight it is to break it. Either enough people break it to make enforcement impossible, or you break it publicly to bring attention to the injustice.
It may hurt your head, but some laws are passed in undemocratic ways, or have consequences that harm democracy. For those times, you might need civil disobedience.
Other times, laws like copyright enforcement just simply go against the grain of human nature and will be broken regardless of government action.

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

King Copyright: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Copyright: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Copyright: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Copyright, was to carry the DMCA. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' laws is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Re:Why Brazil?

Because that is the country CNN wrote the story about. Why not Brazil?

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

now now, there's no need for insu- , wait, my pirated copy of xp just froze up. give me a second.

Read the last paragraphs. Brazil is 1st in change.

From the story: "Tecnobrega producer Beto Metralha said the music developed out of necessity in a place where few musicians could afford to pay a whole band and most music consumers don't take home enough money to buy non-pirated CDs. The average ensemble consists of little more than a keyboardist and a singer, sometimes accompanied by an electric bass. The signature shuffle rhythm is derived entirely from a single program on an electronic keyboard."

And: "Brazil's top-selling Banda Calypso, whose "brega" sound paved the way for tecnobrega, claims to have sold more than 4 million CDs nationwide, avoiding traditional distribution networks and marketing its CDs directly through news stands and other unconventional outlets."

And: ' "Before you couldn't get your record played on the radio if you couldn't afford payola. Now if a song hits big with the aparelhagens, the radio has no choice but to play it," says Metralha. "The dynamic has changed." '

Brazil seems to be ahead of the rest of the world in creating new forms of music. It's not surprising that cultural changes in how music is distributed happen in Brazil.

Re:Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

Way to try to justify your criminal activity, slashfags.

Being a Brazilian "criminal" as you wish to say, I would like to state:

• Nobody purchases original CDs here. People just get them on the streets, with "3 for 5 reais" price tags (~$1 each CD)
• Trash music is everywhere. It is hard to listen to good music nowadays, be it in the radio, the clubs, or the stupid loud car sound systems around the city.
• Musicians get almost nothing selling CDs by normal means (recorder company contracts etc), if you're not a TOP 20 you make more money with shows/presentations anyway, making it very good to spread your music - the more the better
• "Lend me your CD so I can copy it" is normal practice, creating even many "pirated pirate copies" which are copies of pirate CDs purchased on the street.
• Soulseek, donkey2k, kazaa are your friends. You find everything Brazilian.
• There are a few websites promoting local FREE AS IN SPEECH music/art. Like Estudio Livre [estudiolivre.org].
  Good stuff in these websites make me want more, make me want to know the artist behind them. Lately I was chatting with "Varios Um", a Brazilian artist which has very good FREE songs published here [estudiolivre.org].

I have very few original CDs and don't feel any pressure into purchasing more. If things keep this way I will keep downloading free licensed and unlicensed content. The same applies to movies and games.