Piracy

Piracy is one thing that managers of artists are really concerned about.  Most of this happens over the internet; the medium that helps build a fan base, but also helps break the pockets of management teams and record labels. “Music piracy has become an important issue since the turn of the century.  As the Internet has grown, sales of counterfeit CDs through online auctions, web sites, spam, and other channels have increased significantly (Bocij, 2006, p. 5).”  The Mp3 format plays a big role in this being that the format can distribute files easily because it’s compressed.  This allows songs, and even whole albums to be downloaded all in a matter of a few minutes.  Being that the Internet has grown tremendously, software can be pirated in more and easier ways. 

            “Music must be set at a level that will recover the initial cost development, fund further development, and allow research into new products.  Once the company’s investment has been recovered, the price can be lowered a little (Bocij, 2006, p. 148).”  But because of piracy, the artist, the management, and the label the artist may be under loses money from sells of the music.  “This jeopardizes any further development of the program and obstructs the introduction of new products (Bocij, 2006, p. 148).”  With piracy going on, it produces a cycle that drives the prices of the music up, in some cases.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that since the price of the project has been driven that the artist and his/her employees get to see that money.  It’s an even bigger risk to take, banking on new generated sells from the project, and the decrease of piracy.

            Dealing with management – artist relationship and piracy, is a big deal.  If the artist makes no money then the manager makes no money.  Michael “Blue” Williams said it best in his interview with vibe.com “there’s people out there writing checks, and there’s people out there finding checks, and I’m the one who finds them (Williams, 2006).”  With the field of artist management, finding money is a huge task, especially if piracy affects album sales.