8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

The Upside of Music Piracy

August 9, 2017 · Leave a Comment

For a legacy act, taking a nuanced stance on the effects of music piracy is surprising and somewhat brave. But that’s what Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell is doing in a recent interview with Ultimate Classic Rock:

“The way the band works is quite extraordinary. In recent years, we’ve been really fortunate that we’ve seen this new surge in our popularity. For the most part, that’s fueled by younger people coming to the shows,” Campbell said. “We’ve been seeing it for the last 10, 12 or 15 years, you’d notice younger kids in the audience, but especially in the last couple of years, it’s grown exponentially. I really do believe that this is the upside of music piracy.”


Techdirt has some thoughts:

This is the part of music obtained freely that never gets mentioned: the multiplier effect it has on a bands relevance and longevity. This isn’t to say that such a model works for every band in every instance, but it’s refreshing to see an artist step back and try to get the full picture of what’s really going on here. It would be quite easy for someone like Campbell to see the young faces in his audience and never give a second thought to how those younger fans got to a Def Leppard concert. By taking an intelligent look at that question, however, Campbell has reached a place where he’s found a friend where he might have seen an enemy.


It is extraordinary how attitudes are changing across the board as larger artists begin to find advantage in the new music paradigm. (When it comes to topics like this, I wonder how much influence Bob Lefsetz is having on classic rockers.) The only question I might have: is music piracy still a concern when it comes to younger audiences? Are teenagers and fans in their 20s still downloading files? As statistics show streaming gaining traction at an accelerating rate, one might assume Daniel Ek’s mission to eliminate piracy might be paying off.

Another side of the coin: Def Leppard are active on YouTube and engage on social media, regularly posting new content, which is also rare for a legacy band. Though Campbell’s perspective is refreshing, he may be off-base about the reality of what is mostly driving young fans to his band’s concerts.


Update: Music 3.0 blog also asks Does Music Piracy Still Exist In The Age Of Streaming?

------------------

Related posts:

  1. It’s Me and Your Granny on Bongos: Who Owns a Band Name?
  2. Talking Backward
  3. How File-Sharing Affects Album Sales (c. 2008)

Filed Under: Music Industry Tagged With: Piracy, Streaming

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."
 
  Learn More →

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll

A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Hissy Tapes
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
Parenthetical Recluse
Poke In The Ear
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

Newsroll

Dada Drummer
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Garbage Day
Kneeling Bus
Lorem Ipsum
Midrange
MusicREDEF
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Climate Action Resources
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers
+
Roe v. Wade: What You Can Do

Copyright © 2023 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in