By: Staff Writer
November 2, 2021
A Barbadian music and publishing executive is warning artists not to rush to publish their content on YouTube without going through a digital music publishing agent or company first. “There’s a lot of money left on the table.”
Derek Wilkie, managing director of CRS Music and Media Limited, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that there should be no more freebies for Caribbean musicians where no one wants to pay for content. He said: “We had a symposium that was sponsored by the Caribbean Development Bank, and the Barbados Industrial Development Corporation and as a panel we had 42 people throughout the region who logged in from Guyana, to Bahamas, Belize, right through the whole region, for artists and creators of content.
“We were just basically giving them all the knowledge we know about what the right things to do, because the problem is there’s a lot of money being left on the table.
“These guys are rushing to upload their songs to YouTube and everything without any metadata or any correct information.”
Caribbean musician are being ripped off because of the lack of knowledge of how the digital music industry is now trending and the symposium Mr Wilkie held talked about that. “There are people that are getting 5m to 6m streams and they don’t even know their music is,” he said.
He added: “I think what we understood is that there’s a lack of knowledge of where uploading music, a digital partner, what is required, and the marketing tools you have at your hand, to create a fan base.”
He went on to argue that there are tools like Spotify for artists and some of the other digital music aggregators that are great tools that musicians can use as well as other digital distributors, and musicians are “not making the proper use of them.”
Platforms like CDBaby is popular with Caribbean musicians in particular. YouTube on the other hand allows for content creators to monetize their content on that platform, but does not monitor the global distribution of the content after it is stripped from YouTube and used in other mediums.
Mr Wilkie also said: “You don’t need a record label anymore. You can have a global fan base if you understand the tools. So basically nobody’s waiting to get signed anymore, you sign yourself and then you are out and running.
Describing how music used to be before the 2000’s was that artists had to sign record deals and be attached to an A&R to have their music promoted properly, “but now you can create your own music and pretty much go globally,” Mr Wilkie added.
Ultimately, Derek is cautioning all artists to “have a digital footprint” in today’s music market. “Use all possible marketing tools available to you. From TikTok, which is the new kid on the block and upload their music with all the necessary metadata.
“Try to associate with a label partner or someone you can speak with at the label management. And keep creating music, but keep coding it and keep marks in it and keep building it just like you build a portfolio of stocks or bonds. You got to keep track here music, who has it wholly, who you license to whose distributing it.”
There should be no more freebies in the Caribbean where everyone pirates the content and uses it for their own purposes without giving the artists their just due. Whether it is from a local radio station to a content provider to a cruise ship or airline, when you play Caribbean music people must be made to pay for it.