Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy

langelgjm writes "When people talk about the failing business model of the traditional record company, they often only offer vague suggestions as to how things would work otherwise. But a concrete example of a music scene that thrives on piracy is to be found in Brazil, in the form of tecnobrega. From the article: 'While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs, tecnobrega artists see counterfeiters as key to their success ... Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation, an elite Rio de Janeiro think tank and research center, says tecnobrega and other movements like it represent a new business model for the digital era, where music is transformed from a good to a service.'"

Comments

In Soviet Japan

[CurbyKirby]

... Manga copies Doujinshi.

In Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig describes the doujinshi (copyright-infringing comics) industry in Japan and describes how it not only fuels the market for "official" manga comics but can influence them as well.

These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are huge. More than 33,000 "circles" of creators from across Japan produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the mainstream commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously competes with that market, but there is no sustained effort by those who control the commercial manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the competition and despite the law. ...

Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in the view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga flourish.

Linky: http://www.sslug.dk/~chlor/lessig/freeculture/c-piracy.html#creators

Freeloaders ahoy in Brazil

[synthespian]

Just so you know, nobody listens to this in major cities. I don't think this stuff is nowhere near the airwaves of major cities. It's a very low-wage kinda subculture thing and as such gets very little attention. Except where it's lumpenproletariat galore, which is basically their scene, I suppose.

"Brega" means "tacky", having extremely bad taste. Like refrigerator penguins. Like when you try to interpret a fashion trend but get it all wrong because it looks so cheap and ridiculous. Imagine rednecks, but a 1000 times worse. Definitely not mainstream. And limited to a specific region of Brazil.

Low-wage Brazilians typically don't want to pay for anything. They get tax discounts after tax discounts. A typical porter or handyman is a tax-free guy. He gets free medical services and education (which both suck, BTW...), sustained by those that are between a rock and a hard place - the middle class that does pay a hefty 37% tax on income; and the businesses, industries, etc. That's 3-4 months working for the government. Yup. Doctors, engineers, consultancy firms - anyone who's not poor. The leftist corrupt government caters to these people, giving out more government aid and tax-cuts, because then they vote for them.

So why would they pay for music? They're already a bunch of freeloaders, anyway. If they're unemployed, they just pack up and go buy contraband products in neighboring Paraguay (they have a tax-free policy on imports, I think) to resell on sidewalks. No Union protest... Just their very own tax-free shortcut to survival. This is just how their life is. How fucked up. And now some foreigners and academics are fascinated with this...LOL.

Plus, that music sucks. Real bad.