In These Day & Age, I Could Care Less If People “File Share” My Songs

By Paco Arespacochaga

Over the years, I’ve worked hard to create songs that people have come to love and grow up with. I’ve read great (and some not so great) comments on different blogs and youtube channels about how my songs have touched lives and began romances among the youth of the time. That to me is very inspiring!

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine brought to my attention the fact that INTRoVOYS’ songs are on Limewire and other Internet file sharing sites. He thought I was going to be disappointed about the news. Instead, I quickly asked him how many songs where uploaded? He was kind of surprise that I was excited about it. And why wouldn’t I be?

I would love to get my music on everyone’s iPod or mp3 player! Giving people access to my body of work regardless of whether it’s free or not really isn’t the point here. It’s all about getting my body of work to as many people as possible.

At the end of the day, if my body of work is worth a damn thing, people are going to have to compensate me one way or another. How?

They’ll probably want my band to do a concert in their neighborhood and it ain’t gonna be FREE. They’ll probably want to book the band on their program… and that ain’t gonna be free either. They’ll probably want to use my body of work in a movie, TV or indie film their producing and that’s not going to be FREE either. Copyright laws do govern.

But if I don’t give them access to the song in the first place, and if I don’t let them share the song with their friends and if I don’t allow their friends to share the song with more of their friends, how the heck am I going to get my body of work to more and more people especially now that I’ve gone INDIE?

Oh I know! Pay someone on radio thousands of dollars to get airplay… did someone say “payola”? Oh, grease some marketing dude on a major network with thousands of dollars to push the song. Maybe, pay a “song placement” company a couple of hundreds to BLINDLY solicit my songs. ABSURD!

I’ll just throw it out to the general public and let everyone be the judge! I believe that if people believe that my body of work is any good, they will support it. And I believe that most people are smart enough to compensate me monetarily for something THEY LIKE and SEE VALUE IN.

For now, if they want a copy of any of my songs, I’ll give the one they like the most FOR FREE if they email me at introvoysmusic@gmail.com and if they want to buy the songs, they can go to www.introvoys.net and purchase the whole album.

But hey… I can only speak for myself.