I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not, yet now when I post a youtube music clip on Facebook, Facebook make it very easy for me to promote that clip with dollars. When Facebook first started I was able to get a good amount of attention just by posting things into my personal Facebook stream. Now to promote to even to my own fans, i have to pay Facebook. Example, if I don’t pay facebook 5 dollars, I have around 1 like on the YouTube clip through the “organic” Facebook feed. If I do pay 5 dollars, half way through the campaign I have 12 likes, 1 less fan, and 100 plays through YouTube. As Facebook call it, the “organic reach” well it has been reduced over time drastically, or it seems that way to me. With no legitimate recording or publishing industry left in the world, this means in order for the artist to even communicate his message to people that already agree they are fans of the artist, she or he has to pay. Its a communication fee. Facebook Adds at the moment from my view are not so expensive, for the amount of personal exposure possible. Yet as more artists and business’s realise the hard core reality of the Internet..more will pay and prices will increase, I guess. As an artist it’s good that you can be in control of your promotion, and it’s so simple to do so. Yet when the only thing an artist can sell is the live performance, where does that put the value of digital art without promotion. i guess when you spend 1000s of dollars on creation of your art, 5-10 dollars is not a lot. Yet this could become a dangerous habit. 100 plays on YouTube does not pay the artists 5 dollars through the performing rights organisations, you would be lucky to get 2 cents. One project used a youtbe clip I made, and part of my song was performed more than a million times on YouTube, and I’m yet to be paid 1 cent. So in real terms im giving something away for free, with no return possible. Consider Most YouTube revenues goto the larger redundant recording and publishing industry. Id say more than 90 percent of What is sold on Itunes is major label Stuff, and less than 1 percent of the worlds population is buying music on a regular basis. I guess these stats are a wild stab in the dark, yet how to get the real stats. Not sure how to deal with the problem of how to promote what I create on the Internet…yet I want to transmit what I create on some level. I guess as a member of the public, when you do buy music, your feeding the disease not creating a solution.
