The Brazilian music industry!

Brazilian popular music, the domestic product with the greatest international penetration, the only one with access to global distribution networks and major global media, still suffers from the absence of an adequate development policy. The topic needs to be addressed from a strictly economic angle. It is not the State's role to select what is or is not music to be supported, but to define the framework of a favorable microeconomic environment that allows a competitive music industry to flourish.

The competitive advantages of Brazilian music are evident. There is the largest and best stock of instrumental musicians on the planet, an appreciable contingent of composers and compositions both contemporary and from other eras, an incomparable variety of rhythms, from regional music to pop, first-rate arrangers, singers of high caliber, several pop stars with international projection. More: with the advent of digital music, there is independent production without parallel in other periods. Nowadays, thousands of musicians produce their own CDs with digital quality, studios spread throughout the country.

The shoe pinches in two areas: in production itself (what could be called packaging, design and promotion) and in distribution. In the case of production, there is still considerable amateurism in MPB: careless covers and little concern in knowing what the public wants on top of the false purism of "not making concessions to the market". But commercialization is the central point preventing modernization and growth of the popular music market.

The domestic Brazilian market rests on three basic pillars: the recording industry, the broadcasting system and the show circuit. In general, a record is released, the broadcasting system promotes it, boosting sales and, after them, the shows.
This model runs into some complex points that depend exclusively on the government to be corrected. The first, the copyright issue, a little transparent system. The second and more serious, the payola industry (payments made to broadcasters for promotion of record label discs).

Investing in new names, planning national and international releases and attacking market niches all require strategic planning, capacity to face risks, bold and creative producers, like those of other times.
Payola ended that capacity for innovation, bureaucratized major labels, suffocated independents. The work of these bureaucracy champions consists of betting on what worked at another label and irrigating broadcasters with payola. An activity without risk and without opportunities is created. Either this practice, which constitutes an economic crime, is definitively criminalized or the vicious circle blocking Brazilian music will not be broken.

The next step consists in identifying what the distribution market is, both internally and externally. For me, a good sectoral study by BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) on the music production chain would bring more benefits than any tax incentive law. It would help clarify investors, identify business opportunities, attract new companies to the area, breaking the monopoly of major labels.

Especially now that new digital distribution forms open perspectives never before imagined. The other step would be organizing information about the network of performance venues existing throughout the country, to facilitate contact for independent producers. The moment is propitious because there is an appreciable contingent of major artists loose out there, due to major labels' lack of interest in investing in this area.