Piracy makes it far more difficult for huge individual stars to emerge. As put by a journalist, " Rather than helping to create a rock 'n' roll revolution, the unwillingness to pay for music means more assembly-line artists."
'Assembly-line artist' meaning, the cliche popular stars, such as Justin Bieber, Kylie Monogue, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift. All the classic popstars. They produce 'safe' music, something people are bound to like. This is not due to being unoriginal, but due to the threat that piracy produces. Because people can now download music for free, it means the music industry makes far far less money than in previous years, meaning there isn't room for any risk. They must produce something that has some chance of making money.
This very much effected my first ideas for music videos. I went for three very cliche and likeable ideas, not too original or strange. As I realised that in realistic terms, if this was ever to be released it would have far more chance at making any money, if it were to be mainstream with an 'assembly-line artist'.
However, my first instinct when researching piracy was why hasn't anyone campaigned against this? But, when I looked deeper into it, I saw that some people had attempted this such as Lily Allen, or Lars Ulrich ( Metallica), and the public had severely knocked them down. Lily Allen was made the target of abuse and even death threats at her campaign for copyright enforcement, forcing her to ignore the issue. This shows how difficult it would be to tackle the issue for anybody, especially artists being claimed greedy. It proved to me that one of the only ways to make it out there is to follow the crowd and stay safe when producing music and stars. Essentially this means that any strange or new style of music could never truly make it to stardom, and the genres will continue.
However I did find one upside to piracy when reading a quote stated by Liam Gallagher, "But as I understand the consumer didn't want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him- and it changed the world. F*** the customer. He doesn't know what he wants. You give it to him and he likes it."
The last part of the Quote above was the part that drew to my attention the most. If people are given something for free they'll take it, because its free, why not? Therefore in the world of piracy a band or artist could make it huge, but make no money, simply because people can listen to their music, people will, and the more do, the more people like it, the more hype it creates. After this, it could lead to bigger things and maybe people will start to buy the music, or buy concert tickets. Here I saw a way for independent music to find its way to the top. Although this method is not guaranteed by any means it is the only way I could see apart from taking the 'assembly-line' artist' approach.
With regards to my music video it allowed me to think slightly more outside the box on one occasion and one of my ideas became original. Giving a tiny bit of hope that it might have a chance put into the real world.
However, from my experience of producing music video ideas, I do think that piracy is something that is stopping the music industry from allowing it's self to produce new and interesting music, though I cannot see away around this issue due to the previous reaction of the public.
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