Barbados Today

Local musicians are being encouraged to focus more on exporting their talent.

Chief Executive Officer of CRS Music & Media Ltd Stephen Lubin said given the continued diminishing sales of compact discs (CDs) over the past ten years, it was critical that musicians not only depend on the local market.
“To increase revenue streams I would sit here and say, keep exporting your music because that is where you are going to get results. You are going to get results from touring, merchandising and all the spin-offs that will happen. Just keep exporting and keep your music out there globally and more and more things will happen,” he said.
“I am sorry to say this, but the revenues that are coming in regionally from sales is very minimal. Therefore, we have got to focus on getting the music out there into areas where they do want to buy and pay for music. I think it is quite frightening when countries like Afghanistan have as many downloads as Barbados for our local artistes,”                   added Lubin.
He was responding to questions during a media conference on Thursday at Pelican Village following a recent trip to France for the annual MIDEM Music Festival.
Lubin said while there was still a need for CDs, he realized there had been a significant decline in sales over the past decade. He noted that downloads continued to be a major source for people to get music globally but the revenues from downloads were very minimal.
“Two years ago, in the first quarter, CRS had 120, 000 units. A unit is a download, a stream or a play of a song. This year, two years later, we just had 3.2 million units. I am not sure what percentage that is, but that is a tremendous increase. But sadly the revenue does not reflect it at all,” he added.
“At the moment, the download and streaming is less than 12 per cent of our revenue. It is still physical music,” he said, adding that about 63 per cent of download and streaming revenues came from premium downloads and the rest from streaming.
Lubin said even more frightening was that they were receiving more downloads and streams in the Ukraine than they were in Barbados.
“So what we need to educate the youth in the region about is that music does have value and you shouldn’t thief it,” he said.