Music: In terms of Business and Art

     An aspiring musician will always have one particular question in their mind,  "How to make money from Music?"  and it bugs them every now and then. It comes to a point where an artist drifts away from their artistic approach in order to gain mainstream recognition and head towards commercialization. Sad but true, mainstream music is mostly focused on trends and marketing their product, as businessmen think of music as a commodity rather than art. That is one of the main reason why music is losing it's sanctity and why abstract and avant-garde music is buried deep below the weight of popular cliche of music.

      There were times when music business was not very convenient for everyone. Only the artists who were talented, highly dedicated to music and had a very artistic approach to it made it to success. Music industry had yet to take a form, so marketing was rather difficult and the money made by artists would barely afford them a quality life. But they were driven by the very art itself and every record they made was one of it's kind. In the context of Nepal, musicians had very few options to make a living out of music. Radio Nepal was the only platform through which musicians could reach audiences across the nation. Very few musicians got the opportunity to be a part of Radio Nepal's music scene. As time went by, music industry experienced a significant growth and commercialization of music. Music industry saw the rise and fall of many good artists and many artists found convenient access into the music scene. During the last decade, the industry became highly commercial and marketing became profitable. Rise of internet platforms like Facebook, YouTube and sound-cloud has encouraged many aspiring amateur musicians to share their talent and find mainstream exposure. Audiences have an easy access to music and many contents are being uploaded on a regular basis. It's true, artists get an opportunity to share their content through internet. But the real problem here is many good artists are being overshadowed by trending contents which may not even be artistically significant to begin with. There exists a competition with fellow musicians and this results in artists drifting away from art and heading towards commercialization. In the end, it's all about business and musicians are focused mainly on marketing their product rather than working on the actual content and making it more musical. This has resulted in the use of obscenity in music, video oriented musical content with music being very basic as well as good music will find a hard time gaining exposure. Every innovation has it's own pros and cons, but instead of rectifying the cons and improving the music scene, it seems like business has got the best of music and music is losing it's importance and we are all being served the same thing through mass production and somehow, these contents find it easier to get access to exposure.

      Even though the music scene being highly commercial, there are still great materials out there waiting to be discovered. There are good artists with limited but a very loyal fan-base. Their music will find a hard time making it to the surface, but they will make it eventually. So to all the aspiring musicians out there who are having trouble making it to the music business, focus on what you create rather than how to sell it to the market. If the content is good and you have something unique and artistic, the market will find you when people grow tired of the commercial materials that lack proper content. Music must be intercepted in the terms of art. Thus, it is essential for a musician not to turn into businessmen.

 



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