Music Biz: JACAP breaks down digital music landscape

There's still room for quality music from Jamaica, even in the digital realm of streaming and You Tube,

That was the general takeaaway form the latest in a series of workshops built around "The Business of Music" hosted by Jamaica Association of Authors Composers and Publishers (JACAP) at the Spanish Court hotel on Wednesday.

The Workshop, presented through the support of the Caribbean Development Bank featured presentations by UK journalist and media entrepreneur Chris Cooke and renowned Jamaican producer Jeremy Harding on the current state of music vis-a-viz streaming services such as Spotify and social media outlets such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

The takeaaway need to be reinforced amid some gloomy reports of paltry sales and revenues for Jamaican artistes, pop and dancehall, via these outlets. The room saw slides that confirmed that based purely on streaming and You Tube views alone, only a handful of acts were realizing any appreciable revenues, and even then, on only a few songs, and even those intakes paled in comparison to the big names in hip-hop or mainstream pop. Even further, the artistes' ACTUAL SHARE of those revenues was generally 1 dollar in 6

Nevertheless, the pair emphasized that the value of these outlets to Jamaican artistes and producers was in enabling them to build audience more quickly and on a broader scale, rather than trying to compete head-to-head with American and European acts with more resources to devote to marketing etc.

 The presentations showed that Jamaican acts were still in the lower tier of movers, both on streaming star Spotify, as well as on YouTube, which is the most-accessed site for new music. In contrast to an artiste like rapper Drake, with well over 900 million streams of "One Dance" the highest noted Jamaican act was Vybz Kartel with some 22 million streams. (and a similar amount of YouTube views).  


In assessing the event, Vice-Chair of JACAP, Stephen Stewart said the news of low revenues, even for accepted "big name" Jamaican acts is not new and neither should it cause any level of discouragement among the up-and coming or less established artistes. "Its important that the industry players get this kind of reality check, not to create a disincentive to producing and marketing music, but just the opposite - by knowing where the products is in the marketplace and how those markets tend to move, they can adjust for better success." the information shred, he added, underlined the critical role that JACAP is playing in supporting artistes in the quest to maximize returns from their works  'Its important therefore that creators take the time to register with us at JACAP, as this will redound to the benefit of the entire industry."

 JACAP General Manager Lydia Rose acknowledged the support of the CDB, Ministry of Culture, Gender Affairs and Sport  and the input of the presenters and the JACAP team. She also urged artists to take a proactive role in protecting their work, and laso in staying current wit the trends driving the music, media and creative fields globally.

Harding concurred. Speaking of his own formative experience as a nightclub DJ in Canada, Harding reiterated that it was (and is) the love of the music that propelled him to even as his parents and some peers ridiculed his choice to focus on music. "The drive and desire to make something happen and be successful is something that no one can take away, no matter what else changes in the marketplace, people are still making music and will always be making music, its just for our artistes to realize where they actually stand in that marketplace and use the tools at their disposal more effectively."

Cooke, founder of the CMU group of music industry service companies, hosts the UK's biggest music business conference at "The Great Escape" and runs The CMY:DIY education programme for new talent. Harding founded  and runs A&R, music production and artist management outfit, 2Hard Records, and has enjoyed multi-platinum hits as producer of records for Sean Paul, in addition to Konshens and others and collaborations with other producers.

The series continues on Tuesday, with presentations on Artiste Contracts.