As always, hello to all steemers and i apologize for not beeing word-perfect in English. I am from germany and always trying to improve my english :)
As all of us know, or at least as all of us should know, steemit is an exciting platform and many of us feel like they would had used a time machine, going back to 2009 discovering "this new internet money called Bitcoin". And rigtly so!
There are many use cases for steemit we do not even remotely think of at the moment. Today i want to share my thoughts about Steemit in regard to the music industry.
1) "Profit machine music" stumbling
Recording to ifpi.org, the music industrys overall global revenues in 2014 were almost 15 billion US Dollar. Well that sounds like veeeeeeery much, and thats true. But as we know, the industry is permanently crying. In fact, the music industry made much more money by the year 2000. Let me make that clear with a graph from "Business insider". It illustrates the album sales per capita:
As you can see, the album sales dropped significantly per capita. But why did that happen? The chart shows that too:
Only our grand parents use cassettes anymore. Only our parents use CDs anymore. And only hipsters use vinyls anymore :P
Digital music takes a higher and higher percentage of the revenues generated. And digital music is a lot easier to steal than CDs or cassettes. The most thing on the internet are free (at least if you dont care that they use your data and are spamming you with advertisements), people are sharing much more in the internet than in the real world and i love that! But it is poison for the industry. So the music industry loses more and more money. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY NEEDS CHANGE!
2) The big industry vs. the starving talents
The down trend of the music industry is a problem from a capitalistic point of view. Every label must increase their profits to be able to survive in capitalism. But their problems are laughable if you compare them with the problems of small musicians who dont have a label deal. They are the real victims of the retrogressive mindset of people, not willing to pay for good music anymore.
Stars like Taylor Swift are crying because they make a few millions less. A few days ago the AP reported on her and other multi million musicians fighting YouTube because of that. If you are interested in that story i can recommend this Video from The Young Turks.
A few hours ago i saw a post from a singer who is trying to get attention on steemit. His artists name is edgeater and this was his post.
I love his music, he has talent and i am sure that he could become very succesful. I dont know his story, but it is a fact, that a lot people who have very much talent will never be discovered by a big label and dont get enough respect for their work. They often have financial troubles and cant use their talent. THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE!
3) How the big Stars AND the undiscovered talents can profit from steemit
Many people were convinced that micro payments would be the future and could save the big industry and undiscovered talents too. With steemit, you can throw micro payments in the trash.
Micro payments dont work smooth enough. For a normal user it is complicated and means unnecessary stress. On steemit you just click on "up" and thats it. Steemit uses the like button from facebook we are all clicking so often and gives this button a real value. It is sooooo easy to support musicians you like.
And obviously, do you prefer paying money, even if it are just micro payments, ago getting paid if the musician you like is succesful?
You saw how much money people make on steemit. I am 100% sure that musicians would make much more money with this social platform than selling their music on itunes, google play or amazon.
I think that steemit has the power to revolutionize the music industry. The steemit developement is going on and when the first bigger musician joins steemit, i think there will be a chain reaction which will be irreversible. It will help the industry as well as small artists who try to make a living with their music. Lets make this world to a better place!