YouTube shaping the Brazilian Music Industry

I read this very interesting article on the Billboard website and being born and raised in Brazil, it really highlights a very interesting aspect about art and music in Brazil.

The article mentions how big label executives dedicate part of their day to listen and discover new talent on YouTube. This takes me back some years, when a friend of a friend’s band was actually signed by a major label after a big producer asked his Twitter followers what they thought about the band.

As the article mentions, Brazilian people does have a culture of consuming music on YouTube. However, what I feel was missing in this article is the reason.

As much as streaming services offer “freemium” options, YouTube has always been a free and easy way to listen to music. Since it’s creation, it quickly became popular. The many available options of playlists, and all the available video clips for free, only helped grow the platform in the country.

Although there are still so many places in Brazil where there is no access to internet, the almost infinite option of music and videos, makes access to entertainment much more democratic. Especially in a land with limited of public TV, and cable channels are a luxury only affordable by a small layer of society.

And one last crucial thing that only helped popularised the platform, especially for new musicians and artists. It’s not only free to watch — but also to get your material available to everyone. After all, most streaming tools depend on distribution pages to get them live. And even if you manage to get your music on these services, there is still a limited number of consumers in Brazil (some numbers put it around 42 million users — in a country of nearly 200 million people).

I believe these same set of circumstances and numbers are very common in countries that are growing economically. In any case, YouTube is an amazing tool that democratises art.

However, we must remember that this happens at a price, since the platform still pays the lowest revenue when compared with it’s streaming counterparts.

But — one step at a time…