Crockett wrote: ↑06 Jan 2018, 15:12
Thus, what was wrong with the statement of Laserdance if the last album immediately got a pirate version ?
Should they say ? "Even we can barely sell 200 copies, we are stupid and we will spend our private money for new music instead of life, and you fans please choose whatever you want, our legal CD or russian fake".
These are traditional artists, not interested any progress and trends, so they must care only of real sale and support.
Besides, you won't put needlessly great effort, fortune to promote niche genre on a large scale, where the audience is willing to order all new stuff just in view of passion.
Producers of Eurobeat in opposite to Italo Disco, 80's crew lost creativity and ideas, moving color diagrams in Logic Pro, composing by eyes not ears, repeating about compressing, layering and how they are advanced... Then marketing is guilty, became an excuse. Yes, Avex Trax didn't do enough recently, but Max Matsuura isn't a wizard who can boost every shit with the same result during 30 years... You assume brutal promotion that people buy anyway the music they simply dislike.
If they can barely sell 200 copies anyway, then there is something else terribly wrong, not piracy. If it is such a niche that you can't make a living from the music, not even cover the productions costs, well, then you have to deal with it anyway.
BUT that is a lame excuse. We're living in times where you can reach a not-so-small audience for every niche, because not only stuff is available on the internet but also the audience. And it is available through direct connection. You will need to spend some time to learn about how the algorithms of several social media work and for some you will need to make some financial investments as well. But if you didn't even try, don't complain about lack of results.
Take Facebook for example, there is an audience for everything on Facebook. No exceptions. But no one will do the dirty job for you to reach out for the people, even if you pay for ads, you have to place you ads in an intelligent way of course. Now tell me, how many Eurobeat artists did that? Did AVEX do it? Did they do anything to reach an international audience and offered them a way to connect, be informed, and get access to purchasable content? The answer is simply no.
But I can show you successful musicians who did it, and many of them play niche genres too.
If an artist doesn't want to do this from the beginning, it's okay. I would never blame anyone for that. But they should also not blame their audience or piracy for their own lack of success.
And honestly, do you think 80s and Italo Disco musicians nowadays don't use the same tools for music production? No one has a Synclavier or CMI in their living room. LOL