Strategies Used by Colombian Independent Musicians to Reach Audiences

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository

Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations

2021-01-21 Strategies Used by Colombian Independent Musicians to Reach Audiences

Martínez Moná, Mauricio

Martínez Moná, M. (2021). Strategies Used by Colombian Independent Musicians to Reach Audiences (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113015 master thesis

University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Strategies Used by Colombian Independent Musicians to Reach Audiences

Mauricio Martínez Moná

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND CULTURES

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JANUARY, 2021

Abstract

UNESCO (1982) has identified boosting cultural and creative industries such as film, music, publishing and video games as a sound strategy to diversify a region's economy and broaden its cultural capital. Countries like Colombia have created laws and policies to support cultural production; however, using culture and creative talent for business comes with its own set of challenges. Many of these problems are present on a stage defined as circulation

(Hesmondhalgh, 2013), because this part of the value chain is where the main economic power lies and where new ventures typically innovate. I studied the strategies used by Colombian independent musicians and producers to circulate content. To achieve this, a series of interviews with musicians was conducted. Afterwards, the data was analyzed to describe how the approaches to circulation affect other stages in the value chain of the music business. The framework for this analysis consisted of the guidelines utilized for the development of cultural industries provided by UNESCO (UNESCO, 2009; UNESCO, 2013), Colombian policies and laws, and current theories on the matter. The results of this study can provide value for cultural policymakers, musicians, entrepreneurs and other researchers in the field.

Keywords: Colombia, cultural industries, music business, circulation, music circulation

iii

Preface

This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, M. Martínez Moná.

The study reported in Chapters 1-5 was covered by Ethics Certificate number 20-0076, issued by the University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board for the project “Strategies used by Colombian independent musicians to reach international audiences” on March 9th, 2020.

Acknowledgements

I would like to first thank my supervisors Dr. Angela George and Dr. Gregory Taylor.

Their kind words and encouragement steered me in the right direction while writing this text.

COVID-19 restrictions forced us to work remotely, but through emails and Zoom calls I felt they were with me throughout the whole process.

I also wish to thank everyone at the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and

Cultures, including my colleagues. They were all there, listening to my ramblings about culture and industry.

I must thank all the musicians that took part in this study. They trusted their words and feelings to me and I hope that, with this text, I am giving back ideas they can use to continue making and distributing great music.

Dedication

To Fredy who loves to listen to “El camino de la vida” and Fabiola who sings “Pídeme la

Luna” to me.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Preface ...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Dedication ...... v

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Colombia ...... 4

History of Colombian Cultural Policies ...... 6

Current Colombian Cultural Policies ...... 7

Criticism to Current Colombian Cultural Policies ...... 9

Importance of the Study ...... 10

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 12

Definitions ...... 17

Characteristics of Cultural Industries ...... 21

Tension Between Culture and Industry ...... 23

The Study ...... 26

Focusing on Distribution ...... 27

Music as the Canary in the Coalmine ...... 29

The Music Industry ...... 30

General Structure of the Industry ...... 31

Independence ...... 33

vii

Colombian Music Industry ...... 35

From Folklore to “Fusion Musics” ...... 35

Gaps in the Literature ...... 38

Research Questions ...... 39

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 40

Qualitative Research ...... 40

Selecting Participants ...... 41

Making and Maintaining Contacts ...... 42

Collecting Data ...... 43

Instrument ...... 44

Ethics ...... 45

Analyzing Data ...... 45

Chapter 4: Findings ...... 47

The Participants ...... 47

Main Findings ...... 51

Finding 1: Gatekeepers Are Not Vanquished ...... 51

Finding 2: Own Circulation Strategies ...... 57

Knowing the Audience ...... 57

Strategy 1: Live Music ...... 58

Strategy 2: Heavy Use of Social Media ...... 61

Strategy 3: A Lot of Secondary Texts ...... 62

Strategy 4: Networking and Using Other Musicians’ Clout ...... 63

viii

Strategy 5: Merchandising and the Album as an Object ...... 64

Strategy 7: Free Press ...... 65

Derived Findings ...... 65

Finding 3: Genre Is a Toy to Break Apart and Put Together Again ...... 65

Finding 4: The Meaning of Colombian in “Colombian Music” and ¿Dónde está el chucu chucu? ...... 68

Finding 5: Being in the Music Industry Is About Learning Constantly ...... 70

Finding 6: Distrust Everyone ...... 71

Finding 7: Tension Between Commerce and Creativity ...... 73

Finding 8: The Colombian Music Industry ...... 75

Conclusion ...... 88

Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 90

Discussion ...... 90

Research question 1: What are the circulation strategies used by Colombian musicians to reach

international audiences? ...... 91

RQ2. How are these circulation strategies affecting musicians' perspective of the Colombian music

industry? ...... 92

Limitations ...... 95

Implications ...... 95

Future Research ...... 97

Final Thoughts ...... 97

References ...... 99

Appendix A ...... 108

Interview script in Spanish ...... 108

Table of Figures

Figure 1 UNESCO Model of the Culture Cycle ...... 28

Figure 2 Simplified Music Value Chain ...... 32

Figure 3 Value Chain for the Traditional Music Industry (Derautor) ...... 37

Figure 4 Value Chain for Independent Music, where artists take more than one role (Derautor) 38

Figure 5 Mind Map Used for Coding ...... 46

Figure 6 Visual Representation of Gatekeepers ...... 56

Figure 7 Proposed Value Chain ...... 94

Chapter 1: Introduction

On February second, 2020, Superbowl LIV took place at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami

Gardens, Florida. A 30-second television advertisement spot on the Fox Sports broadcast of this event cost between $5.5 and $5.6 million US dollars (Steigrad, 2019). The Superbowl is a sports event with an important half time show that draws audience from people around the world and more than once has caused controversy for different reasons. Two of the four main performers on stage for 2020 were Colombian: Shakira and J Balvin (Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Bad Bunny &,

J Balvin. 2020). These two Colombian shows that took center stage in this popular North

American cultural phenomenon sparked the question about why Colombian cultural products are achieving success in reaching international audiences, even with language as a barrier.

J Balvin performed wearing a T-Shirt that said "MADE IN MEDELLIN" with the logo of his 2020 album Colores (J Balvin, 2020). This led me to believe that being from Colombia and showing it —almost flaunting it— is part of his marketing strategy. It is not the first time J

Balvin has used his birthplace as an element of his performance. For example, “Blanco” (Balvin,

Ramírez, & Cano, 2019, track 10), the first single from Colores, contains the same phrase on his t-shirt (Exposito, 2020); "Made in Medellín" pronounced [made i:n medeʤin] and not [meɪd ɪn medeʤin], as it should be said in standard English. Linguists will understand this explanation, but for the rest of us, it is perhaps easier and more enjoyable to simply listen to the song, paying attention to the 30 second mark, you will hear the singer saying "made" as if the word were in

Spanish. Another language element that refers to his origin is that "Latino Gang”, and

"Colombia" are common shouts in his music, and these were clearly heard during his performance at the Superbowl in 2020. This is not a stand-alone occurrence for the genre reguetón or for Colombian artists. Maluma can be heard saying "Colombia" from time to time in 2 his songs. In “Qué Pena” (Londoño, J. L., Balvin, J. A., Barrera, E., Ramírez, A., & Larfaoui, W.,

2019), a collaboration between J Balvin and Maluma, "Colombia" is the first word they sing after the two singers' names, again, almost bragging about it; also, at the end they say "…de

Medellín, Colombia parceros"1. That last word can be equated to the word “mate” of British or

Australian-English speakers and it is recognized as a word particular to Colombia.

The references to Colombia and Medellín caught my attention and also initiated my curiosity about the success of Colombian cultural products. These products form a part of their branding, contrasting massively with the common occurrence for Colombians: feeling shame when the country is referred to, linked —again and again— to drugs and violence.

I can think of salsa that was made in New York, ska borrowed from Jamaica and popularized by bands from Los Angeles, K-pop from Korea and J-pop from Japan, Argentinian tangos, and Norwegian metal music. Location matters in music, and Colombians are proudly advertising that they come from a country with a reputation for drugs and prostitutes

(Colombians like to remind people about coffee, but sadly that is not the stimulant people think of when they refer to: “Colombian is the best”). This contrast jumped out and initiated the train of thought that ended up in the work you are reading.

In spite of being music written and sung in Spanish, the reach of Colombian music has been spreading. It used to be the case that, to make it to the mainstream stage, an artist needed to sing in English, like Shakira did in 2001 with “Whenever, Wherever” (Shakira, Mitchell, M.,

Estefan, G., 2001, track 3). Subsequent hits proved Shakira not to be a "one hit wonder" as it is common with many songs in languages other than English. For example, this occurred with

"Lambada" (Oliveira & Hermosa-Gonzáles, 1989, track 1) from Kaoma at the end of the 1980s

1 From Medellín, Colombia parceros.

(originally a Bolivian song in Spanish and stolen by a French producer who made a version in

Brazilian Portuguese), "Macarena" (Ruiz Perdigones & Romero Monge, 1993, track 1) from Los del Río during the 1990s and "Fruit de la Passion" (Vincent, 1991, track 7) by French Franky

Vincent.

Even though the spark for this thesis came from highly successful international artists, I did not address J Balvin, Maluma or Carol G; mainly because those big hits start to belong to the world stage and their work becomes international, from the conception to the audience. Instead, I went back to review the process of Colombian artists and tried to elucidate interesting elements happening at the beginning of their careers; I did not try to figure out what made current hits.

There is a common saying in Hollywood and the movie business in general: "Nobody knows anything". This phrase is used to describe how uncertain the success of a film would be, especially in terms of distribution (Walls, 2005). That phrase has alluded to the high uncertainty of the success or failure of movie projects, and Walls focused on distribution because this stage is quantifiable, so it has been the stage where the “unknown” could become less unclear (never quite reaching clarity). It has also been considered the stage where business and art come together, and the way artists and businesspeople think of distribution affects the whole process

(Hesmodhalgh, 2013; Flew, 2013). The same way Walls (2005) modeled how distribution affects movie success, I had to focus on one part of the music business that could convey the most meaning to the whole process, so distribution was also the focus of this research. In particular, I questioned distribution strategies to see if there has been a change in Colombian music industry.

The framework developed parted from international and Colombian cultural policies and was also from the musicians' perspective.

Colombia

Colombia is located in the north of South America and is a culturally and geographically diverse country. The southern region, called Amazonas, is a tropical rainforest where Ciro Guerra filmed El Abrazo de la Serpiente (Guerra, 2015), a movie that was nominated for an Oscar. In the north, is the Caribbean coast where Ciro Guerra shot Los viajes del viento (Guerra, 2009) and

Pájaros de verano (Guerra, 2018). This region also saw the birth of Shakira and Gabriel García

Márquez. The main city of Colombia is Bogotá, designated UNESCO City of Music (Creative

Cities Network, 2012) and where the international soap opera hit Yo soy Betty la fea (Ribero

Ferreira, & Gaitán, 1999-2001) was mostly recorded. The second largest city is Medellín, a place that has moved from being considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world, home of world-famous drug lords immortalized in movies and shows like Narcos (Eckstein, 2015-2017) to a world-famous tourist destination (Stewart, 2018) and also declared UNESCO Creative City of Music (UNESCO, n.d.). The pacific coast, known in Colombia for its African roots, has produced international hit bands like ChocQuibTown, winners of Grammy Awards that have expanded the notion of transcultural music in a globalized world (Dennis, 2012).

The main reasons I used these cultural products to describe the country were to show that

Colombian products have been circulating abroad with various degrees of success, and to show the diversity of the country. However, a rich cultural capital has not been the reason Colombia is known internationally; Colombia has tried to rebrand itself, even with the reputation of being a conflict-ridden country (Bassols, 2016). While in the process of writing this thesis and living in

Canada, I have mentioned that I am from Medellín and I usually get two responses that mention two different cultural products: Narcos or J Balvin. This has led me to believe in a change in

5 perspective foreigners have of Colombia, and I believe cultural policies and the cultural production that has happened have been part of the reason.

Colombia's constitution (Const., 1991) proclaims the country a social state governed by the rule of law. It is a unified republic with decentralized government where territorial entities have autonomy. The purpose of the State is to serve the community and its prosperity and guarantee the rights of the constitution. Power derives from the people, who exercise it directly or indirectly through their representatives. Spanish is the national official language and other languages and dialects of diverse ethnic groups are also recognized. The constituent assembly —

Asamblea Nacional Constituyente— considered autonomy for the territories was the appropriate road to take since 1991; however, in reality policies and laws have continued through a centralized form of government (Estupiñán Achury, L. 2011; Leiva Ramírez, E. 2015). Colombia is not supposed to have centralized power, but in practice, central government and its policies are still prevalent.

The structure of the Colombian State divides power between three branches: legislative, executive and judiciary. For this study, two branches are of interest: legislative and executive, mainly because these work together to plan, budget, fund and execute public policies, determining instruments and goals for the country in terms of economic and cultural output. The legislative branch of the national government takes the form of congress and its main tasks are to offer control of the executive branch and to create laws. The executive branch of the national government is represented by the presidency and its ministries, this branch is in charge of the administration of the State (Const., 1991). Local governments have a similar structure with the mayors as head of administration and its dependencies called secretaries, similar to presidency and ministries; and the council, that acts like congress on a local level.

History of Colombian Cultural Policies

The first text that mentioned attempts to understand Colombia’s cultural and geographic landscape was La comisión corográfica in 1850, a Spanish attempt at describing Nueva Granada and its provinces with an economic interest; in a few words, Spanish colonizers trying to see where the riches in the colonies were (Guhl, 2005).

The first governmental attempt at creating policy was the cultural project created by the

Colombian liberal party with Radiodifusora Nacional de Colombia2 in 1940. Through radio and some publications, politicians enforced the concept of using culture to create the State-nation with the idea of a shared identity. While this was mainly created with propaganda purposes, it is considered the first attempt at democratizing access to cultural goods (Silva, 2000).

The next milestone was the creation of Colcultura in 1968, a division of the National

Ministry of Education, as an institutional effort to centralize the creation and enforcement of cultural policies. Prior to this, these activities were scattered in various institutions under the

National Ministry of Education (Compendio de políticas culturales, 2010). During the decade of the nineteen eighties, then president, Belisario Betancur, propelled emphasis on the creation of national identity, decentralizing taken actions (Bravo, 2008).

In general, up to this point and because the only point of view I am taking into account is the official public policy documents, cultural policy in Colombia was marked by the construction of the concept of the nation, it was seen as a way of creating a unifying identity. This idea of the ruling central government dictating what the national identity is can be related to the concept of

“high culture” taking over “working culture” (Williams, 1961), and the case could be done for explaining the problems it has created. There are theories that link the start of Colombia’s armed

2 A national broadcasting company.

7 conflict to inequalities and the institutions ruling with their backs to the people (Yaffe, 2011).

Construction of the “Colombian culture” as a monolithic concept dictated from the centre

(economic, politic, geographic and cultural) is itself a topic of study I will not delve into, as it goes outside the scope of this study.

In 1991, a new Colombian Political Constitution was sanctioned. This document marked a series of changes from the previous one, expanding the foundation of the country from a unifying concept of a Hispanic, catholic and Castilian nation to a multiethnic and multicultural

State (Camacho, 1997). This created the scaffolding for the current landscape in Colombian

Cultural Policies and in 1997, President Ernesto Samper sanctioned Ley 397 known as Ley

General de Cultura, where Colcultura was liquidated and the current National Ministry of

Culture was born (Congreso de Colombia, 1997). This law is the base for the current cultural policies of the country.

Current Colombian Cultural Policies

The main national entity in charge of cultural policies and its enforcement is Ministerio de Cultura, part of the executive branch, which means it answers directly to the office of the presidency. This ministry also coordinates Sistema Nacional de Cultura3 (Ministerio de Cultura, n.d. a).

Each regional and local government has power to organize its cultural system how it best suits them, but they are usually divided into secretarías, departamentos, unidades or Casa de la

Cultura (Bravo, 2008). Local governments mimic the national organization: the head of the executive branch for the national government is the president and for the local government is the mayor; and the organizations in charge of managing specific sectors nationwide are the

3 Cultural National System

8 ministries (Ministerio de Cultura in the Colombian cultural sector), and the local entity depends on many factors like population size. Since I am just focusing on two cities, I will only mention

Secretaría de Cultura, Recreación y Deporte in Bogotá, and Secretaría de Cultura Ciudadana in

Medellín.

OCDE (2014) has characterized the Colombian economy as led by a rapidly growing and increasingly vulnerable mining sector, facing internationalization that, although beneficial for the country’s GDP, provides challenges. The reliance on oil makes the peso appreciate, while making non-extractive industries weak. Spearheaded by Ivan Duque, the president for the period 2018-

2022, the current government of Colombia has pushed the creative and cultural economy as one of the engines that drives diversification of the Colombian economy (Mincultura, n.d. b). For

OCDE and Ivan Duque, diversifying the Colombian economy is imperative.

Ivan Duque’s political career has been linked to cultural and creative industries. He was

Chief of Culture, Creativity and Solidarity for IDB and he co-wrote Economía Naranja una oportunidad infinita (Buitrago & Duque, 2013). Before launching his campaign for the presidency, he was a senator, where he proposed and passed La Ley Naranja, a law which boosts creative and cultural industries (Ministerio de Cultura, n.d. b). After that, he launched his campaign for the presidency, where he proposed creative and cultural industries as a key scheme in his political agenda.

The main strategies for the management of Ley Naranja are (Congreso, 2017):

1. Creating a system of information about creative and cultural industries.

2. Creating a system to articulate public and private projects on the national and

local level.

3. Strengthening the creation and legalization of these industries.

4. Developing infrastructure (physical and virtual) and provide access to it.

5. Integrating Colombian industries with the global market.

6. Including local content creators to the benefits of the law.

7. Promoting the participation of local talent in local, national and international

stages.

Colombian cultural policy was first thought of as a way to unify a country. Then it was seen as a way of understanding and creating diversity. Now it is a way of creating economic wealth while also empowering communities.

Criticism to Current Colombian Cultural Policies

There have been several criticisms of current Colombian cultural policies (Rey, 2019):

1. Colombian cultural industries are highly asymmetric (music represents 43,2% of the sector while design only 8,7%), concentrated and fragile;

2. they lean toward the economy, leaving the cultural side as an afterthought and making art a commodity to be sold and bought;

3. creative and cultural industries are concentrated in a few cities;

4. there is fear of the industry taking over and making everything about monetary returns; and

5. there is a disconnect between ideas and actual instruments used to enforce these policies.

Jorge Restrepo in Bocanegra (2019) also criticized the use of a new term to refer to the creative economy, saying that it is ambiguous, and that public policy needs to concentrate on defining the different stages in the process and strengthening the weak links to empower people and their ventures.

Importance of the Study

The Colombian push to use creative and cultural industries has not happened in vacuum.

Using culture as a commodity has been a global movement lead by The United Kingdom but taken on by governments in various countries (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). Given the role governments (and the Colombian government in particular) have placed on creative and cultural industries, understanding how cultural policies are impacting production and consumption of cultural products has become crucial. The Colombian state has put its trust in these policies, investing resources to boost a particular sector of the economy, and the hope is that studies like the present inform better decision-making by policymakers and content creators. When legislators have more information about the result of policies and how they are affecting people and industries, they can make better decisions. Understanding public policy helps to explain the importance of the current study.

Public Policy is the process in which governments translate their vision into programs and actions to deliver outcomes (Cochran et al, 2015). The main process to understand how policy is created, implemented, and assessed is the policy cycle (Jann & Wegrich, 2007), which is considered an ideal process of six stages, which vary from country to country, but in its basic form consists of:

• Agenda-setting: identifying the problems to be solved of ideals to be achieved.

• Formulation: defining goals, implication, costs.

• Adoption: government approval.

• Implementation: establishing resources, partners, creative instruments, program,

laws.

• Evaluation: assesses the effectiveness of the policy and its implementation.

Input from any actor of the state is highly recommended at any stage, and academics are called to do research to inform any part of the cycle.

The current study was conducted as part of a master’s thesis and therefore the scope needed to be narrowed down. In the following chapter, I connect the Colombian approach to the worldwide stage, lay the theoretical framework for cultural industries, and then explain the reasoning behind choosing to delve into understanding the circulation of music as a particular aspect to give the reader a glimpse of how cultural policies are impacting workers and the industry in general.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The previous chapter describes how creative and cultural industries are a part of

Colombian public policy trying to diversify the country's economy. This chapter provides the literature review to set the basis of a study to understand circulation of music in order to inform policymaking, bearing in mind the limitations of conducting a study about Colombia from

Canada with few resources and with COVID-19 restrictions that coincided with the research process. In the first part of this review key terms are defined and the current situation and theories about development and creative and cultural industries are explored. Then, there is an explanation about why the distribution of music is the process determined as the example to exemplify how public policies are changing the industries. This is followed by a brief explanation of the music industry to finalize the chapter with some gaps in the literature that will inform the instrument designed to perform the study with the available resources.

Creative and cultural industries have been concepts used to refer to several terms that sometimes coincide and more often differ in nuances or in major conceptual bases. There has not been one definition that reached consensus because there has been a lot of debate about what creative and cultural industries are, whether these exist or not, what is their definition, and which industries fall into this category (Flew, 2013; Adorno, 1975; Buitrago Restrepo & Duque

Márquez, 2013; Hesmondhalgh; 2013; UNESCO, 1982). To clear up the confusion, some elaboration is required to understand the importance of the field and why it is a field in and of itself. The first step is to focus on the history of the field of study.

In the 1940s, German philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer published

Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002). The chapter The Culture Industry:

Enlightenment as Mass Deception described “the culture industry” as what the authors considered a new monolithic system composed of film, radio and magazines. A clue to understand the wording of this term is in Culture Industry Reconsidered, where Adorno (1975) described how, in their first drafts of Dialectic of Enlightenment, the authors considered calling this system "mass culture” but decided to call it "culture industry" for one very important reason: it described the origin of this from an industry, not the mass. The authors considered the culture industry not the culture of the masses, but the industry created to use culture to control them.

Adorno and Horkheimer belonged to the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and their concept of "culture industry" criticized the way the cultural products no longer belonged to the realm of art, in their words "Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing other than business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce" (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 95). For them, culture equated art, and the use of culture for economic purposes stripped the art from its fundamental purpose, the mirror and criticism of society intended to free the minds of artists and audience alike.

Even though the beginning of the term belonged to the realm of critical theory, in this article the authors described many of the concepts on which other authors would base theories of creative and cultural industries, with critical intent or not. Hesmondhalgh (2013) explained further development of the theories on cultural industries, which happened in the 1960s and

1970s as authors started discussing the term (Armel et al., 1978; Miège & Garnham, 1979) and the plural version cultural industries was born. This happened at the same time as culture and business intertwined further as big corporations started seeing the potential in investing in film, television and recording industries (Hesmondhalgh, 2013; Schiller, 1991).

These developments gave way for thoughts about public policy. During the General

Conference of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), held in Paris from 24 October to 28 November 1978, a team of scholars was appointed to work on the place and role of cultural industries in the cultural development of societies. This team gathered later in Montreal and published their work as Cultural Industries, A Challenge for the

Future of Culture (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1982), a document that can be considered one of the first frameworks to develop public policy aimed at the development of creative and cultural industries. In the end, the purpose of these efforts was to aid in the creation of sources of income that did not rely on natural resources but on human creativity whilst taking advantage of the important cultural changes happening in the world. The document also highlights how technology makes cultural industries evolve creating new problems. The conclusions of this document revolve mainly about policymakers supporting particular stages of the process, while keeping in sight the broader objectives of cultural development; they also stress the importance of solutions and how they need to address the economic and technical issues while also addressing social and cultural matters. In summary,

UNESCO highlights how important it is for policymakers to use research to shape how to transform cultural industries into opportunities for world cultural development. This document is full of the ideas other scholars have continued to develop for almost thirty years now (Banks,

2010; Flew, 2013; Buitrago Restrepo & Duque Márquez, 2013; Hesmondhalgh 2013; Florida,

2017). There was a reversal from the culture industry as a monolithic way of controlling the thoughts of masses to the plural cultural industries as a tool to empower economies using human creativity to develop their cultures and create economic value.

By the beginning of the 21st century, using human creativity as the prime matter for new ventures was not a novel concept. Richard Florida published Cities and the Creative Class

(Florida, 2005). In this book the focus was not on creative and cultural industries but on urban development. Florida’s main claim was that cities were no longer the industrial hubs created by the industrial revolution; therefore, many industrial jobs disappeared. City centres and suburbs had been decaying and had ceased being the cores of economic development they used to be.

Florida proposed to change the industrial nature of cities with something he called “the creative class”, defined as professionals whose labor relies heavily on knowledge. This creative class was described as professionals who would create the new city, a central hub of knowledge and a booming economy, regenerating slums and solving urban problems.

Developments in theories have not been confined to just Florida. UNESCO continued working on expanding frameworks for development using culture and knowledge. In 2008, 2010 and 2013, they published their Creative Economy Report (UNESCO, 2013). The aim of these documents, and its achievements according to themselves, has been for them to work as reminders that using cultural and creative industries can be good for boosting developing economies.

However, this approach was deemed controversial and the implications of the concept of creative class as the centre of urban development, and creative and cultural industries as tools for developing economies have been continuously discussed. There are authors and researchers who have been cautious and agree to a certain degree (Krätke, 2010), saying these concepts are just stating the obvious and appealing to policymakers with fancy words without giving a clear route to such magical economic development tools (Collits, 2005). There have also been notable cases

16 where authors blamed these concepts as tools for gentrification and institutionalization of counterculture (Howell, 2005).

In The new urban crisis: How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and failing the middle class and what we can do about it, Florida (2017) agreed to a certain degree that his model for urban development had flaws and had contributed to a winner-takes-all type of urbanism. However, he proposed some tweaks to improve his model without really backtracking or accepting everything he is criticized for.

In spite of the criticism, there are examples that show the use of cultural industries, and the policies surrounding the concept can be used with success. Kwon & Kim (2014) showed that policies established by the Government of Korea allowed this country's cultural industries to grow exponentially from the early 1990s to the late 2000s, when they reached global importance.

The article showed that this change happened after the country shifted the focus of culture from being a political force to a market force. This was coupled with a shift to a knowledge-based economy, focused on advanced technology like information communication and technology, cultural industries being at the centre of said shift. Changes in the government body "Ministry of

Culture" are described as a demonstration of the strengthening of policies and growth of the sector over the 2000s. A key takeaway from this example is that the definition and nature of creative and cultural industries are pointless without considering the context.

Documents about cultural industries in developing economies, Latin America and specifically in Colombia might help illuminate the particular approach in the region and the country. The first one mentioned previously is Creative Economy Report (UNESCO, 2013). This document was aimed at showing a blueprint developing economies like Latin American can follow. The second text is The Orange Economy: An Infinite Opportunity (Buitrago Restrepo &

Duque Márquez, 2013) published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This book was a manual on how to develop an economy based on creative and cultural industries, which they call “The Orange Economy”, creating yet another term.

Definitions

The first term coined by Horkheimer & Adorno (2002) is "The Culture Industry". As already described, this term comes from a critical perspective and it aims to describe the capitalist way of using culture as an industry to unify thoughts and consumption.

The term "Cultural Industries" was described by subsequent philosophers (Armel et al.,

1978; Miège, Garnham, 1979; Flew, 2007; Hesmondhalgh, 2013). The plural version aimed to oppose the unifying view of critics, saying that there are different industries that share some commonalities; however, they are very different. There is no agenda to control masses and they can be looked at from a critical perspective or not. A clear definition was given by

Hesmondhalgh (2013) as industries that "deal primarily with the industrial production and circulation of texts" (p. 16). He also made a clear distinction between the core cultural industries

(broadcasting, film, music, publishing, video games, advertising and web design) and borderline cases (electronics/hardware, information technology, fashion and sports).

Public policy and how governments see the industries are an immense force that shapes the concepts. "Creative economy" is commonly used in policy documents, and it is a term attributed to Howkins (2002). He defines creativity as the ability to generate something new and economy as the system of production, exchange and consumption of goods and services. He then describes how creativity becomes part of the economy when the generated "something new" is an idea with economic implications. These ideas are referred to as creative goods. Creative

18 economy can therefore be defined as the transactions generated from creative products, mainly subordinated to intellectual property laws.

Finally, orange economy (Buitrago Restrepo & Duque Márquez, 2013) comes from trying to reconcile all these terms (the ones defined and leisure industries, entertainment, content, copyright, etc.). The authors' definition is: "squeeze it". This is a very "creative" definition but for the purpose of this study it is not very useful because the way they unify the terms into one is creating a very diffuse one, there is not one single definition for this umbrella term. So, because for them it is up to each government trying to create cultural policy to define its own term, I will focus on Colombia.

The way the Colombian government defines the term orange economy is a “development model where cultural diversity and creativity are pillars for social and economic transformation of the country, from the regions (…) based in creation, production and distribution of cultural and creative goods and services, protected by intellectual property rights” 4 (Ministerio de

Cultura. (n.d. b).

The importance of these definitions is to specify which industries fall into this category, because the economic incentives given by governments trying to boost a particular activity can be very alluring. If we take Hesmondhalgh’s (2013) definition, software is not part of it because it is not really a text (an object that conveys meaning), but it is part of orange economy, because it is a creative good protected by intellectual property rights. For this reason, every definition is usually followed by a classification system and a list of industries that can be included. Taking a

4 Translated from: “La Economía Naranja es un modelo de desarrollo en el que la diversidad cultural y la creatividad son pilares de transformación social y económica del país, desde las regiones. Este modelo cuenta con herramientas de desarrollo cultural, social y económico. Se fundamenta en la creación, producción y distribución de bienes y servicios culturales y creativos, que se pueden proteger por los derechos de propiedad intelectual”.

19 look at some classifications, we can see each definition puts the importance on different aspects.

All of these have been taken from Creative Economy Report (UNESCO, 2013).

1. Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS):

Advertising, architecture, art and antiques market, crafts, design, fashion, film and

video, music, performing arts, publishing, software, television and radio, and video

and computer games.

2. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Model

Core copyright industries:

Advertising, collecting societies, film and video, music, performing arts, publishing,

software, television and radio, visual and graphic art.

Partial copyright industries

Architecture, clothing, footwear, design, fashion, household goods, toys.

Interdependent copyright industries

Blank recording material, consumer electronics, musical instruments, paper,

photocopiers, photographic equipment.

3. Concentric Circles Model:

Core cultural expression

Literature, music, performing arts, visual arts.

Other core creative industries

Film, museums, galleries, libraries, photography.

Related industries

Advertising, Architecture, Design, Fashion

Wider cultural industries

Heritage services, publishing and print media, television and radio, sound recording,

video and computer games.

As you can see, every classification is slightly different, and it can incorporate some industries that are not included in another classification. And another point of sharing these classifications is that you can tell what is important for an author or an entity when these classifications are created. For example, you can see for WIPO the most important aspects of creative industries are elements that can be protected by copyright. Whereas for the concentric circle model, the most important element is the expression created by people.

This is the classification done by Colombia, taken from the Economía Naranja website

(Ministerio de Cultura, n.d. b):

1. Arts and heritage:

Visual arts: painting, sculpture, photography, art video and performance.

Scenic arts: concerts, opera, circus, orchestra, dance and theatre.

Tourism and cultural heritage: museums, traditional kitchen, crafts, natural parks,

libraries, archives, festivals and carnivals.

Education: training in arts and heritage crafts, training in artistic endeavours, training

in cultural entrepreneurship and management.

Gastronomy: traditional kitchen and drinks.

Crafts: indigenous, traditional, popular and contemporary.

2. Creative industries, new media and content software:

Digital media: video games, audiovisual interactive content, digital platforms,

software creation, app creation, animation, news agencies and other information

services.

Design: interior, graphic arts and illustration, jewelry, toys, industrial (products),

architecture, fashion and furniture.

Advertising: advisory services, creative services, advertising material production,

diffusion media, creation and production of advertising campaigns, marketing and

other services.

3. Cultural industries:

Editorial: bookstores, books, journals, magazines, and literature.

Phonographic: recorded music.

Audiovisual: film, television, video and radio.

I want to point out some things about this classification. The first one is that, for the

Colombian government, “arts” and “industries” are two different categories, and the main difference is the possibility of mass producing and selling. As you can see, all the concepts in the arts and heritage category can have economic return but not in an industrial setting. Also, this category has part of music in the form of concerts, festivals, and education. The second point is that cultural industries for Colombia share the same meaning as for Hesmondhalgh (2013), they are built around the creation of artifacts that convey meaning. And creative industries are the rest of the industries that can be exploited for economic gains but do not have a strong link to meaning and expression. Overall, this classification expands on the idea of using human creativity for creating wealth.

Characteristics of Cultural Industries

Horkheimer & Adorno (2002) started the term from a critical discourse, and they described some characteristics that would become the base for many other scholars. These are mentioned and developed by Flew (2003) and Hesmondhalgh (2013):

• Technology has a big impact on their development: the printing press changed the

editing industry; the development of the framework for music notation, the

possibility of recording performances in a physical medium, the digital

transmission of music changed the music industry; the invention of the

kinetoscope, the addition of colour or sound to film changed the film industry.

• They tend to work in clusters, where cities are centres: Los Angeles and Mumbai

as film production capitals. This has even had wider acknowledgement from

UNESCO with the creation of the Creative Cities Network.

• Culture Industry creates a filter of life through the meaning shown or interpreted:

propaganda used by German Nazi Party is a case study on the use of media and

cultural products to acquire and maintain power which was used for political

purposes (Bachrach, Luckert, 2011).

• Immateriality of the product, also called semi-public goods: when people buy a

CD, they do not buy the object but the possibility to enjoy what is inside of it.

This means that they are not destroyed by use.

• Innovation and novelty are a must: no matter how good a product is, the audience

never forgives repetition and will stop buying new products if there is not novelty

in them.

• Highly variable shelf life: shelf life of a song can be a week or decades.

Sometimes they even spring back to life if they become culturally relevant again

for some reason.

• High cost of producing, low cost of distribution: producing an album, a book or a

movie is a long and costly process, however, reproducing millions of copies is

virtually free.

• Tension between the business and the creativity: this idea is developed further

because this study is right at the centre of this tension. For now, and as an

example, I would like to describe a scene in the movie The Doors (Stone, 1991)

which describes a famous episode that happened in real life. The band is going to

perform during the live Ed Sullivan Show. An executive of the network tells the

band that they would like the sentence "…girl we couldn't get much higher" from

"Light my Fire" changed to "girl we can't get much better". When they perform in

the show, Jim Morrison proudly sings the original lyrics. This eventually resulted

in the band being banned from appearing ever again on the show. Beyond the

discussions of censorship, this scene shows the tension mentioned by the authors.

The creator has a vision that ends up portrayed in the text, and the businesspeople

want to control this creation to broadcast it and, hopefully, make it profitable.

Tension Between Culture and Industry

As mentioned previously, one of the defining characteristics is the tension that exists between culture and industry. It can take many forms: culture vs commerce, high culture vs low culture, pop culture vs art. The tension seeps into real life, and this will be seen during the analysis of the interviews. For now, the focus will be on how culture and industry are terms that are at odds with each other.

One of the hinges of this tension is labour. The use of creativity and craft labour are one of the most enticing parts of cultural industries to attract talent. However as creative and craft

24 labour are vital for the industry, they tend to be under threat of standardization, poor labour conditions and lack of creative autonomy (Banks, 2010; Cohen, 2015; Hesmondhalgh, 2013). A study on the corporatization and the erosion of creativity in Cirque du Soleil (Leslie & Rantisi,

2019) found that, even though the worldwide economic and artistic success of Cirque du Soleil came mainly from the ability to cultivate a vibrant and distinct culture and identity in Québec and the company's ability to work without any formulaic approach, its corporatization and quest for growth and profit has made it a different place to work due to standardization: where there used to be creativity and tacit knowledge now there is a quest for efficiency in creative labour.

This example shows one of the fears and reserves creative workers have when it comes to creative and cultural industries.

I like to imagine a continuum. On one side is pure artistic freedom, where an artist creates without thinking of any type of audience or money, there is pure expression. On the other side is the "suit" making pure business decisions and using creative content to make money. Decisions by artists, policymakers, businesspeople or audience push any project or company towards one of these extremes. The main reason to develop this idea further in this literature review is that the interviews focused on circulation, the stage where this tension creates the most issues.

In Culture, Inc. (Schiller, 1991) this dichotomy takes the form of big government vs big business. The book written at the end of the 1980s shows a critical view of the world that was taking form putting neoliberal ideals above everything, including culture. The authors clearly stated that big business was being sold as the only alternative to communist society where government is corrupt and must be stripped apart, leaving the free market to regulate itself. On the other side, in In Praise of Commercial Culture (Cowen, 2009), the author did the opposite.

This book was written praising the use of market forces and supply/demand to boost the creation

25 of music, literature and visual arts; the created economic wealth enables creators to support themselves, while the market allows big commercial hits to exist while also letting small niche products to be created, even if their audiences are small and specialized.

ONGs like UNESCO have developed frameworks to develop culture from an industrial point of view, and subsequently these frames have been taken further to develop public and cultural policy, especially in Colombia which will be the focus on subsequent chapters.

The stance taken in this study is: if a government says they want to create industry, that is a conscious decision. This does not mean that art is unimportant, it only means that resources from the state are being put towards achieving this goal. These decisions come with challenges, as any decision does, and one of these is being measured within these goals. This is what is happening in Colombia. The Government has clearly created policies to develop economic gains through creative and cultural industries. It is up to their citizens to accept and use them or to enforce their legal right to vote against it. Critics of Economía Naranja clearly state that current policies in Colombia lean towards the "industry" side. Seeing the role of the state as the provider of solid institutions without giving money towards "culture".

As an important side note, I must note that cultural industries do not include art. There has been a thin line because a lot of times the concepts that have differentiated them are either close or not clearly defined. When I analyzed the classification of Economía Naranja, I noted the

Government of Colombia made a different category for arts and heritage. Art cannot be mass produced, it goes against its very nature. The concept of art is not an industry in itself, but what is built around it can be. However, it can be commodified, and doing it or not depends on people.

It can be said that there is such thing as an art industry and exactly this is what Horkheimer and

Adorno (2002) might have been referring to, but art as an aesthetic concept is not necessarily linked to industry.

However, the opposite is not true either, cultural industries are not just about business or monetary profit. Current business literature has said that, even though the main reason for a business to exist is maximising profits, other purposes can, and should, align with new and innovative business models (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2011).

The Study

Creative and cultural industries is a vast topic and conducting a comprehensive study requires a lot of resources. Colombia created Cuenta Satélite de Cultura y Economía Naranja

(CSCEN), an office dedicated to measuring and publishing statistics about the public policy that stems from Ley Naranja. This office is part of Dirección Nacional de Estadística (DANE), a national governmental department in charge of planning, implementing and evaluating statistics for the country, in order to understand and solve social, economic and environmental problems

(DANE, n.d.). This means that quantitative data are publicly available. However, and this falls in line with what the critics of Economía Naranja say about the policy, everything measured is about economy, with few words about culture.

Published qualitative data shows that, from the orange economy, functional creations are

45.6%, arts and heritage are 19.2% and cultural industries are 25,2% of the revenue. This is 3,2% of the overall GDP of Colombia and that percentage has not grown (3,2% in 2014, 3,3% in 2015,

3,2% in 2016, 3,1% in 2017 and 3,0% in 2018 and 2019), which means that, since 2014 the growth of the orange economy has been the same as the rest of the Colombian overall economy

(DANE, 2020).

Even though policymakers, including Colombian, put creative and cultural industries in the same bill, Girard (1982) makes a case for dividing the industries in different sectors and dividing these sectors into stages of production, because by considering the various stages of the process, it is easier to ascertain troubles of each industry and each individual process of said industry in order to make changes. For this study I chose the circulation of music for various reasons explained below.

Focusing on Distribution

To understand the separation of any business or industry, it is useful to understand the concept of value chain, which is the representation of the systems a company or organization uses to create value, from start to finish (Porter, 1985).

Another way of dividing the production of creative and cultural industries is by stages.

These are never independent from one another, they interact, overlap, interfere, and help each other; as defined by Hesmondhalgh (2013):

Creation:

- Conception

- Execution

- Transcription to final master

- Reproduction and duplication

Circulation:

-Marketing

- Publicity

- Distribution and wholesaling

- Retailing/exhibition/broadcast

Figure 1 shows the approach taken by UNESCO (2009). In this chart, they did not define a value chain, but a cultural cycle that can help understand another perspective.

Figure 1

UNESCO Model of the Culture Cycle

Note: Taken from UNESCO. (2009). The 2009 UNESCO framework for cultural statistics (FCS).

In this chart, the stage previously referred as circulation in Hesmondhalgh (2013) closely resembles the stage here called dissemination.

When discussing the characteristics of creative and cultural industries, there was a particular characteristic deemed problematic, the tension between culture and commerce. Harvey

(2002) explained the term commodification of culture as turning cultural and creative goods into products that can be bought and sold. For him, the process alienates artists who sometimes feel cheated by a market that does not value their creation, but at the same time providing value to

29 expressions and uniqueness. This process happens in circulation or distribution, it is the stage where art meets commerce and in this interaction is where I believe more information could be found.

Music as the Canary in the Coalmine

Even though cultural and creative industries are put in the same basket, there is no single model you can apply to all of them. However, it is possible to use one to define simple and general characteristics of all of the industries. For example, music has elements that can be extrapolated to fields such as writing, games and performing arts (Flew, 2013).

I want to use three anecdotes that can show why music is the best option to see changes in distribution for cultural industries.

As a teenager, the first album I bought with my own money was The Offspring's

Americana (Jerden, 1998) circa 1999. CDs were priced somewhat prohibitively for me and I had to save up for months to get one. The other options I had to get to some rebellious tunes were listening to the radio or watching MTV. Also, sometimes there was the bootleg copy of a tape recorded many times over (sometimes from the radio with the obvious audio watermark). One year or two later, I started seeing my friends use P2P software to "share" music online, which then would be burned and shared as CDs. We were too young to understand the legal battle our actions were unleashing. In 1999 Napster was created and in 2001 it was killed (in its free P2P sharing software form) by legal actions taken by Recording Industry Association of America

(RIAA). After this, there were countless copycats, but the importance of Napster was that it started a conversation about the circulation of digital music that eventually would reach the film and editorial industries (Lamont, 2013).

During the same year, Apple launched the iTunes store, where listeners could buy music online legally. By April 2004, Apple had sold 85 million songs, and the success of this model coupled with broadband improvements would later make video, podcasts and books added to the store (Kleinman, 2019).

In 2005 Pandora was launched as a streaming radio station and in 2008 Spotify launched as an on-demand music streaming service (Baskerville & Baskerville, 2020). Then, Netflix would start its streaming service in 2007.

The three examples show a familiar pattern —also described by Hesmondhalgh (2013)— when it comes to digital technologies, music is at the forefront because of its low bandwidth necessities. This is true for creation and, as the three cases proposed, for distribution. It can be said that music is usually the canary in the coal mine when it comes to being disrupted by digitization. Other industries usually follow. For this study, circulation of music was the process to be thought of, with some limitations, as the centre of changes in cultural industries in

Colombia.

The Music Industry

I would like to stress here that this study is not particularly about music, but this particular industry is being used to see how circulation is happening in Colombian cultural industries. When I described the classification of music in Economía Naranja I called attention to the fact that music in these documents is divided into numerous activities. The music business is a multifaceted industry, and here I propose a framework to understand the nuances of the business built around the art of the muses.

General Structure of the Industry

To define a general structure of the music business, Baskerville & Baskerville (2020) described the processes that happens for a musician to reach an audience with a new song:

1. The composer—who sometimes is also the performing artist—writes a song and

signs with a publisher.

2. The publisher persuades an artist (or an artist's producer) to record the song.

3. Lawyers (at several stages) negotiate contracts between parties and specify terms

for varying forms of usage and exploitation, such as mechanical rights and

synchronization licenses.

4. The record company produces a recording and, possibly, a video version of the

song.

5. Promoters persuade programmers to broadcast the audio recording and the video.

6. The record company uploads the song for online sale or streaming and ships the

merchandise to distributors, who sell it to retailers.

7. In cases where artists retain distribution rights, artists sell music from their

websites and negotiate deals directly with download and/or streaming digital

platforms.

8. If the song becomes popular, a second wave of exploitation can occur—licensing

of ringtones and merchandise connected to the song or artist.

9. A talent agency contracts promoters and venues to book a concert tour.

10. Concert promoters enlist cosponsors and sell the tickets.

11. The road manager moves the people and the equipment.

12. The concert production manager dresses the stage, lights it, and reinforces the

sound.

13. The artists perform.

14. The performing rights organizations collect performance royalties.

15. The accountants count the money; the participants pay their bills.

16. The government collects the taxes.

This approach falls in line with UNESCO's model of cultural cycle (UNESCO, 2009), and because there is a focus on music as business, the process is more detailed when it comes to dissemination and exhibition/reception/transmission. So, it can be said that this is an industry that deals in terms of creation, production, dissemination, exhibition, consumption. It is fair to mention again here that these processes are not silos and they tend to interact profoundly with each other.

There are other interpretations of the industry. Figure 2 is a value chain published by the

Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA) (CIMA, 2013):

Figure 2

Simplified Music Value Chain

Note: Taken from Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA). (2013) Sound Analysis: An

Examination of the Canadian Independent Music Industry. Canadian Independent Music

Association. This value chain is a simplified graph that shows the core functions of a music company (a traditional record label). This model is considered to be more nuanced now because other companies are performing different functions. This simplified value chain is only used for comparison in this study.

This approach is true when the big music industry is concerned. However, there is another approach that can be easily described. Baskerville & Baskerville (2020) called it the entrepreneurial musician that has been possible by the increasingly affordability of home-studios and the direct-to-fan era. However, the name direct-to-fan has a connotation that intermediaries are obsolete in 2020 and this is simply not true.

Independence

“Independent musician” is a difficult term to clearly define because the meaning changes a lot depending on who is talking about it. One way of understanding independence would start from how creative industries are organized. There are four types (Davis & Scase, 2000):

• Commercial bureaucracies: exemplified by the common major record label, where

control is highly explicit and formalized. Creativity follows the single purpose of

making a profit.

• Traditional/charismatic organizations: tend to be smaller businesses that rely on

shared values, exemplified by small independent labels.

• Cultural bureaucracies: usually public service companies that, although under a

hierarchy, they work under relatively autonomous departments. The best example

here are public broadcasting companies.

• Network organizations: micro-companies that operate in network with other

companies.

Again, a line can be drawn. On one side there are the big record labels (Universal Music

Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Emi Music) and on the other side, there are independent musicians, entrepreneur musicians or network organizations, that are not part of the traditional bureaucracy. When I refer to independence, it is when decisions are taken with a framework closer to how network organizations function.

Because I want to know how musicians are handling distribution, independence, for the purpose of this work, refers to musicians who retain control of the distribution strategies to use for their music. It does not mean the lack of use of services by big companies (the simple act of uploading a song video to YouTube means the use of Google services, a gigantic company).

Instead, it is about the decision-making power.

Going back to the direct-to-fan era described by Baskerville & Baskerville (2020), there is a complexity hidden in this idea that current digitization processes have made circulation a direct contact between musicians and fans and record labels are not the only intermediaries.

Galuszka (2015) described companies called “aggregators”. Individual artists or small record labels that want to sell their music in digital music stores or streaming platforms need to use these aggregators that bridge the gap between an individual artist and the tech platforms that can either sell the music using the digital music store that sells songs (i.e. iTunes, Bandcamp,

Amazon, Google Play) or the streaming services that, through a subscription service, allow the audience to listen to their music content (i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Tidal,

KKBox, Line Music, Napster). These aggregators charge using different schemes, it can be a once-time submission fee, a small percentage of digital revenues earned by the submitted songs,

35 or a mix of both. Sometimes they also offer additional services to musicians like marketing, social media strategies, digital content promotion, workshops, consulting, etc. but these are not necessary for distribution.

After the overall framework for the music industry, in the next section I delve deeper into the Colombian particular case, describing the documents found on the topic and seeing how it compares to the rest of the literature.

Colombian Music Industry

From Folklore to “Fusion Musics”

Musical studies in Colombia have been done starting from the concept of folklore, that usually comes with an inevitable feeling of doom because popular culture and modern society are destroying this authentic music that belongs to the real Colombian culture (Blasco, 2000).

Ochoa & Botero (2009) describe an interesting path Colombian music took in the 1990s in response to newly developed interest in folkloric music amid urban middle class: “fusion musics” that take elements from tradition and mix them with new styles and production forms.

Famous examples of these “fusion musics” are ChocquibTown, with fusion of salsa, latin jazz and hip hop with rhythms from the pacific coast, a region with strong ties to African ascendance;

Bomba Estéreo that fuse cumbia with EDM and hip-hop, closer to the Caribbean coast rhythms; an older band called Sidestepper; and I could even make the case for Shakira who fuses Arabic rhythms, showing the Arabic migration in the Colombian Caribbean coast. Ochoa & Botero

(2009) also describe how new Colombian artists created a differentiation between commercial and non-commercial music, and how musicians and producers of these types of “new Colombian music” usually start self-funding projects that are taken on later by a company in an “economy of sacrifice” where artists work in the service industry to fund their musical endeavours.

The previous topics have been the most prominent when scholars discuss Colombian music. The industry has not been debated widely in scholarly literature, but some examples are described next.

(DNDA) and forms a part of the executive branch of power. The following brief description of copyright in Colombia is a summary extracted from El derecho de autor y los derechos conexos en la industria de la música (Monroy, Ospina, Ardila & Murcia. 2010) which is the current guide on the website for DNDA.

In Colombia, authors and composers, when creating a song, acquire two sets of rights on their creations, moral and patrimonial rights. Moral rights are about being recognised as the author of a piece and patrimonial rights are about the exploitation of the work. Author can give patrimonial rights (moral rights are untransferable) to a third party for exploitation. Usually, these rights are given to a collective society that administers the rights and collects royalties, the biggest ones in Colombia are Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de Colombia (Sayco) for authors, and Asociación Colombiana de Intérpretes y Productores Fonográficos (Acinpro) for performers and producers. In the same document, two value chains are described: Figure 3 represents the value chain for the traditional music industry and Figure 4 represents how the independent music works in the country. Both show the relation between the different actors in the industry:

Figure 3

Value Chain for the Traditional Music Industry (Derautor)

Note: Taken from Monroy, J. C., Ospina, C. A., Ardila, J. S., & Murcia, X. R. (2010). El derecho de autor y los derechos conexos en la industria de la música. Dirección Nacional de Derechos de

Autor. The approach taken by Dirección Nacional de Derecho de Autor (DNDA, also referred to as Derautor) focuses on actors and not processes as CIMA’s value chain did. The reason for this is that Derautor is in charge of designing, directing, managing and executing intellectual property laws in Colombia.

Figure 4

Value Chain for Independent Music, where artists take more than one role (Derautor)

Note: Taken from Monroy, J. C., Ospina, C. A., Ardila, J. S., & Murcia, X. R. (2010). El derecho de autor y los derechos conexos en la industria de la música. Dirección Nacional de Derechos de

Autor.

Gaps in the Literature

The reviewed literature about Colombian music industry has some gaps that become apparent under close scrutiny. Firstly, there are no clear studies that examine how Colombian artists and cultural content creators apply policies aiming to boost the industries, other than official documents and newspaper opinion articles. When the scope is narrowed down to music, most of the studies and theories found concentrate on the production of culture and music as an art form (not focusing at all on circulation, exhibition and reception). The only document

39 available describing the music industry and the circulation of it was found in an official document that is based on how copyright works in the country, without much input from musicians. It can be interpreted as what things should be, rather than what they are.

Overall, research studies, theories and manuals exist for a worldwide stage, but I could not find resources that tell me how these manuals apply in the Colombian case, even though the country is pushing for growth in the sectors. Research in this field remains scarce, and for this reason the focus of this study was concentrated around circulation because it is the stage of the value chain with the most possibility of providing understanding to the whole industry, and music because it is the cultural industry that usually leads the way when it comes to disruption, especially about circulation.

Research Questions

RQ1. What are the circulation strategies used by Colombian musicians to reach audiences?

RQ2. How are these circulation strategies affecting musicians' perspective of the

Colombian music industry?

Chapter 3: Methodology

The purpose of this study is to explore, by looking at circulation, the extent to which

Colombian cultural and creative industries are taking advantage of the public policies. Among the cultural industries, music is the one that shows changes the quickest, particularly when technology is forcing such changes. The methodology chapter starts with a description of why qualitative research was the most appropriate for this study, and then describes the logic behind the instrument chosen. Next, there is a description of the process to select participants, a description of how the data was collected, and then how it was analyzed.

Qualitative Research

The literature review conducted for this thesis led to the conclusion that in order to gather sufficient information about cultural industries in Colombia this thesis study should concentrate on circulation, which is the stage that combines production and consumption. The most usual methodology for doing research on production and consumption of industries is gathering quantitative data in the form of costs, revenue and market share (Pickering & Griffin, 2008).

Quantitative data is usually made available by public bodies, professional trading bodies and marketing research companies (Leavy, 2017). In Colombia, Departamento Administrativo

Nacional de Estadística (DANE) has a satellite account for cultural economy provides the government and the public with this information. Leavy (2017) has explained that quantitative research values breadth, statistics, and generalization. On the other side, qualitative research values the depth of meaning and people's subjective experiences along with their meaning- making processes. Because DANE data explores quantitatively the Colombian cultural and creative industries, this thesis study complements this research by exploring qualitatively the

41 understanding of the meaning of cultural and creative industries by the artist (or content creator, symbol creator, etc.).

Within qualitative research there have been different tradition and approaches at research.

Cresswell (1998) defined five: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography and case study. The current study was about understanding a phenomenon that has affected a group of people, and the closest tradition I tried to adhere to was phenomenology. This meant taking a receptive stand to what others manifested, deep listening without attempting to control the studied subject, then reflection according to Mortari & Tarozzi (2010).

Research in the social sciences typically has moved from model-building to model- testing and particular types of interviews can be used to do either part of this research cycle

(Wengraf, 2001). The first step for this study was to create a model of the music industry that served as an initial framework of the music industry. Then, the model-testing was applied to the

Colombian context, by conducting semi-structured interviews with Colombian musicians. These interviews were then analyzed, and the framework was updated accordingly.

Pickering & Griffin (2008) described some challenges that interviewing has shown in the long tradition it has had in cultural studies which include selecting participants, making and maintaining contacts, and collecting and analyzing material. Next, I examine how I confronted these challenges by discussing each one in more detail.

Selecting Participants

This study is centred around entrepreneurial Colombian musicians. However, this is still a broad description of the possible participants. I later narrowed down the participants by their location in Columbia. To do this I used DANE data to concentrate on the two largest regions with the largest concentration of the music industry.

In the third report of "Economía Naranja" (DANE, 2020), regional data shows that the main places with venues for public shows are Bogotá with 96 and Antioquia with 75. This report also describes the number of music schools which paints an interesting picture. Colombia has

1570 schools, Antioquia has 172 (11%) and Bogotá has 65 (4.14%). However, Cundinamarca

(The region where Bogotá is located) has 126, which means that Bogotá and its surrounding area have 191 music schools (12.16%). Not all musicians are linked to music schools, but these numbers can be interpreted as showing concentration of music production in Bogotá and

Antioquia, unsurprisingly where the two largest urban areas are in the country. Falling in line with the idea of cultural industries working as clusters in cities, I have chosen to focus on the two main cultural centres (measured by number of venues), and those are Bogotá and Antioquia.

Bogotá is the capital and a special district. Antioquia is a region with its capital being Medellín.

For the purposes of this study, the interviewed musicians needed to fulfill three requirements. First, they needed to be based in Bogotá and its surrounding area or Antioquia.

Second, they needed to be interested in independent distribution. Finally, they could not have signed with a record label or a company that takes the responsibility of the main distribution decision making away from them. This was in order to ensure an accurate representation of current developments in the field.

Making and Maintaining Contacts

If a study cannot contact and persuade participants to be interviewed, it is over before it has begun (Pickering & Griffin, 2008). To reach Colombian musicians in the best possible manner, I determined that I needed a person that was part of the industry and could lend some legitimacy to the research. I reached out to Juan José Peña, a friend that has a history in the

Colombian music industry, his résumé includes being the keyboard player in a band called La

Derecha. He also works for a company called CD Baby; an aggregator based in the United

States. However, his involvement in this research had nothing to do with his current position.

When I approached him, the initial idea was for him to refer me directly to musicians by letting them know about my research. However, he proposed to add me to two WhatsApp groups created by people in the industry, one in Medellín and the other on in Bogotá.

This gave me an entrance point. First, I sent a short text to these groups, explaining briefly what the aim of my research was. I received responses from 21 musicians who agreed to participate in the study, mainly because they were interested in reading my results.

In the planning stages of this research, the idea was to travel to Colombia and conduct the interviews face-to-face. As a result of COVID-19 restrictions, the interviews had to be planned and eventually conducted over videoconferencing software. While initially I thought it was going to make the process of finding participants more difficult, I found that musicians were willing and eager to participate via videoconference.

Collecting Data

To understand the phenomenon, circulation of music, the used instrument was primarily a semi-structured interview that attempted to elucidate musicians’ perception. Secondary texts like published music, social media profiles, streaming services, and the texts artists have published there; were used to support the analysis.

Semi-structured interviews are valued in the qualitative research tradition because they accommodate open-ended question theoretically driven that allow the researcher to achieve a fully in-depth exploration of the studied phenomena (Galletta, 2013). This author also explains how to design the interview in three segments:

1. Opening segment where the purpose of the interview is expressed, and a safe space is

created so the participants can talk about their experiences. Open-ended questions

without a lot of structure allow the researcher to listen and achieve connection with

the participant’s story.

2. Middle segment where the topic of study is discussed in depth. The questions are

focused in achieving the nuances of the story, allowing to further in participant’s

points of views and meaning.

3. Concluding segment where the researcher can connect back with the participant. This

can be constructed from the already-answered questions. There should be space for a

conclusion of the interview.

Instrument

Following this blueprint and understanding that these questions were modified throughout the data collection phase, what follows is the designed script of the interview which are translated from their original Spanish, attached as Appendix A:

Opening segment:

• Tell me, with as much detail as you are comfortable with, the story of your current

musical project. Please include genre, influences, and goals.

Middle segment:

• Which is your project's audience? How do you research your audience?

• How do you communicate with your audience? How do you get feedback?

• What are your strategies to get them to listen to your music? Which platforms do

you use?

• What has been your release schedule? Do you prefer albums, EPs, singles? Which

format do you use?

• How about live music, is it a part of your project? What's your approach to it?

• What about the international side of your project, do you have one?

• What do you think about Colombian music labels? What about international

labels?

• When you start thinking of a song, do you think of the way you are going to

deliver it to the audience? or does this process come after it is done?

• Is there something unique about the Colombian approach to the music industry?

• What do you think about Colombia’s cultural policies? Have you been benefited

by them in any way?

Concluding segment:

• What is the future of your project?

• How do you define success for your project?

Ethics

All the participants were free to take part in this study and all of them had the choice of being anonymized, although eighteen of them chose to be referred to with their artistic name or the name of their projects. One artist preferred her own name to be used instead of the project she is part of, and two projects decided to be anonymized and will be referred to as Banda A and

Banda B.

Analyzing Data

After the interviews were conducted, I transcribed the recorded audios and coded the resulting texts. The process was heavily inspired by the methods described by Saldaña (2013),

46 with coding and analysis methodologies which are not strict and are supposed to adapt to every researcher and study. Before the transcription and coding, I created the mind map, shown in

Figure 5, using the literature review. If there were more themes that started appearing in the review of the texts, these were added, moved, modified according to the analysis.

Figure 5

Mind Map Used for Coding

Note: Own creation.

In the next chapter I will describe the findings that I extracted from the described analysis. This chapter also includes an overview of the participants, and their responses. All the process of the interviews, transcription and coding was conducted in Spanish, the interviews were not completely translated. The quoted parts of the interviews in the next chapter were translated to make it easier for English speaking readers of this text.

Chapter 4: Findings

In this chapter I describe the key findings that became apparent from the analysis of the interviews that happened between May 19th and June 20th 2020, and the aforementioned secondary sources. A total of 20 participants took part in this study. The findings mainly stem from the analysis of the transcribed interviews, but some ideas came from the field notes taken and the public profiles in social media and streaming services. First there are the main findings that answer in a more direct manner my research questions. Then, there are derived findings that refer to a broader view of the music as artistic expression.

The Participants

The following is a brief description of the bands that took part of this study. It is presented in alphabetical order by name of the person or the band. The listed follower and monthly listener count are presented as of November 4th, 2020. The genre of the projects is described as closely as possible using the words participants themselves used during the interviews or had stated on their online public profiles. When I describe the name of the band or an anonymous participant, I use the pronoun they/their, and when I refer to the person, or a solo project, I use the pronoun each person prefers.

4to de Mente is a band composed of three people, they are located in Medellín and have three years of history as a group, but the members have a much longer history in music. They define their genre as rock. The sound of the name 4to de Mente can be translated as “room of mind”, “fourth of mind”, “insane room” or “insane of the mind”. The band has 19 monthly listeners in Spotify and 761 followers on Instagram.

Alejandro Trujillo Moreno is part of three bands: Aleteos, Nybram and Yarumo.

Alejandro has 15 years of experience in music. Aleteos is his primary project for this interview,

48 and it is a folklore band with roots in Latin American sounds and Latin American fusion rhythms. Aleteos has 27 monthly listeners on Spotify and 1259 followers on Instagram.

Andrés Gualdrón is part of the bands Andrés Gualdrón y los Animales Blancos,

Magallanes and Islas Atlánticas. Andrés has nearly 10 years of experience in music and he is also interested in music and cultural journalism. Magallanes is his current project, an electronic music band, not to dance but closer to ambient. Animales Blancos has 629 monthly listeners on

Spotify and 2737 followers on Facebook. Magallanes has 129 monthly listeners on Spotify and

329 followers on Instagram.

Aristi is the solo project of Sergio González Aristizábal. Aristi is a singer-songwriter project with soft acoustic music with a “chilled message” about life and its depths, with themes about meditation. It is a project that tries to get away from the figure of the rockstar and comes closer to the idea of an artisan. Aristi has 244 monthly listeners on Spotify and 2879 followers on

Instagram.

Arrierians is an alternative rock band that creates music inspired by the west of

Antioquia, a region linked to farms and paisa5 culture. The name comes from the word “arriero”, a farmer that uses mules to carry produce. The most famous arriero is the fictional character

Juan Valdez, a coffee grower that is currently shown in the logo for Juan Valdez Café and the

Café de Colombia brands. Arrierians has 41 monthly listeners on Spotify and 875 followers on

Instagram.

Banda A makes fusion of music from the Colombian Caribbean and the Colombian

Pacific regions from the perspective of city-dwellers, particularly people who were born and raised in those regions but now inhabit a big city, particularly Bogotá. This gives the music

5 Paisa refers to the northeastern Andean region in Colombia.

49 influences that come from rock, funk, jazz, and blues. The band has 228 monthly listeners on

Spotify and 1918 followers on Instagram.

Banda B is an indie rock project based in Medellín, heavily influenced by progressive rock and projected as a multiplatform bet with heavy influence of audiovisual narrative and aimed at a specialized and a tranquil audience. The band has 99 monthly listeners on Spotify and

11.2K followers on Instagram.

Boom Alakrán is a band that created a genre called retumba. The band is led by

Malhechor, who has extensive experience in salsa music but decided to go against everything, destroy the genre and invent a new one. Boom Alakrán has 73 monthly listeners on Spotify and

1025 followers on Instagram.

Andrea Hoyos is representing two bands. The first one is Balandra, which if she had to typecast it in a genre, it would be new Latin American song, fitting with Argentinian rock, folklore, fusion and Jazz. And the second one is Cachicamo, a project inspired in the music of the Colombian Eastern Plains, a type of Colombian local folk music usually played with harps, cuatros and maracas. Balandra has 133 monthly listeners on Spotify and 267 followers on

Instagram, while Cachicamo has 264 monthly listeners on Spotify and 1154 followers on

Instagram.

Camilo Bartelsman is a part of numerous groups and did not speak in the name of any of them, but the most known band where he is a member is 1280 Almas. His personal focus is mainly on sound experimentation. 1280 Almas has 38,814 monthly listeners on Spotify and

15.9K followers on Instagram.

Caro Jaramillo is the solo project of Carolina Jaramillo. She considers “singer- songwriter” a genre in itself, and beyond that, all the rest of the genres enrich the project. She

50 sings about all types of love, not just romantic love. She has 47 monthly listeners on Spotify and

2023 followers on Instagram.

Illary is the oldest band on this list with over 30 years of history, composed by members that have changed, in a continuously renewing project. The band plays mainly Latin American folkloric music, closer to the southern part of south America, not so much to Colombia. Illary has

856 monthly listeners and 2446 followers.

Juan José Peña talked about two projects. The first is called Escotes, that makes hip hop with electronic music and it is described as danceable mountain sound. This project has 77 monthly listeners and 452 followers. Alas 3 is music to share with the family, especially with kids. This project has 53 monthly listeners and 92 Instagram followers.

Kukos Band is a big band that plays ska reggae and swing fused with Colombian music.

The band has a strong wind ensemble and simple lyrics. Kukos Band has 123 monthly listeners and 1715 followers.

Lucas Hill is a solo project, a singer-songwriter that plays indie pop. His music is born from wild and majestic places that create kind and considerate music. He fuses jazz and bolero using acoustic instruments with technological sounds. He sings in Spanish and English. Lucas

Hill has 22,024 monthly listeners on Spotify and 1227 followers on Instagram.

Maga is a female-led band that plays a fusion of pop with urban and Latin sounds. The music is always coupled with original dances, inspired by synchronized swimming. Maga has

36.6K followers on Instagram and 10 monthly listeners on Spotify.

Nami is a project that started from theater experimentation and became a band that plays pop, jazz, somehow rock but always Colombian style. Nami’s music is described with sentences like “jazzy cumbia bass”, and “flamenco with pop drums using bambuco style”. The band has

3860 followers on Instagram. I do not list Spotify monthly followers because I could not find an account. Apparently there was a problem and it was not visible.

Natalia Huertas is part of a musical project, but she spoke in her own name. She plays electronic dance music inspired by academic research on music from the Cundiboyacense plateau (the high plain where Bogotá is located).

Niyireth Alarcón sings Colombian Andean music. She calls her music “new traditional music”, because if she says folklore, people will link her to static old (boring) music. She has

7,907 monthly listeners and 10.2K followers.

Perros de Reserva is a rock band for people who are fascinated by dark topics, the tenebrous, black and mythologic creatures like vampires and others that “come from the bestiary”. The band has 372 monthly listeners and 10.3k followers.

Taller de Retazos had to think a lot about how to describe the band’s genre, but decided to call it Latin American alternative music with some influence of British rock: “talking about genre is difficult nowadays”. The band has 77 monthly listeners and 1,052 followers.

Main Findings

Finding 1: Gatekeepers Are Not Vanquished

One of the promises of digitization of cultural industries is the democratization of production (Hesmondhalgh, 2013) and the aim of this study was finding the circulation strategies musicians use. There were some, but if a hopeful approach is taken about these promises, it can be underwhelming to read that the first finding was that gatekeepers still control a hefty part of circulation and these continue to be a mountain to climb for musicians, who still need to convince some of them to reach an audience.

The described path usually started with musicians’ ideas and creation, they have started alone, reaching the first gatekeeper with the figure of the producer. This has been true only when the producer has been a different person from the musicians, because sometimes they have produced their own music. This has been the most intimate gatekeeper musicians reported to have, and usually they have allowed producers to be straightforward with their artistic decisions, even though it has sometimes worked against the relationship. Caro Jaramillo has had different producers, usually other musicians with technical knowledge for producing good quality sound and mixing, and they have given her inputs for her music. She explained that:

"each one of them has a super different view. For example, I have one that is the

sound landscaper who paints what I say, but I also have another one that is a producer for

other artists, and he tells me 'Caro, I hear this and it is zero commercial', and I say 'Bravo,

it does not matter'".

4o de Mente said:

“the first question a producer asks is ‘What are you going to do with this? If it is for

yourself you better record this in your own home and leave it like that’ (…), but if we are

going to record this together, it is because part of the aesthetic expression of the song is

combined with the one from the producer (…) a producer comes in and gets me out of my

comfort zone and contextualizes the market for me”.

Even though most musicians were adamant that writing songs is a process of pure personal expression, there has been negotiation with the market, and this process has become the first gatekeeper towards reaching a possible audience. This can be the producer’s input, or the musicians themselves when they put on the self-producer hat.

The second gatekeeper have been the digital distributors, or the aggregators. I have called these companies gatekeepers because, even though any musician that agrees to their terms can distribute their music through them, musicians think there have been tiers with differentiated services, and if an aggregator likes their music, they could get different services that would give them a boost. Andrea from Cachicamo and Balandra said: "they have an accompanying service for artists, but you need to follow some standards they have, they listen to the quality of the music and depending on whether they like you or not, they offer these services or not". Some musicians have received more services, and others have been treated as bulk.

An alternative gatekeeper that has become prominent has come in the form of streaming companies and their playlists. When asked what they would like to get from aggregators, Taller de Retazos answered: "something like getting into a Spotify playlist, nothing from another world.

I have inquired and some colleagues have gotten help from aggregators to get into those lists, I do not know why this did not happen to me". Aristi tells a success story:

“a milestone for me was being included… Spotify included me in a singer-

songwriter playlist called ‘Folk Itinerante’, a cooler name. (…) Marta Gómez, Velandia,

Pala are there… and there I am (…) other than the reproductions I will get, I know people

who listen to them are going to start listening about Aristi and… yeah!”.

Government bodies have been gatekeepers as well, mainly because they have held funding for live events, production, venues and some festivals in the country. Support governments have given musicians is expanded upon further below, but here I want to make explicit how the government has been a gatekeeper, and convincing them of the value of a musical project would open the door for opportunities to reach an audience through funding and live performances. The bodies participants mentioned are Ministerio de Cultura at the national

54 level, and for local governments are Instituto Distrital de las Artes (IDARTES), Rock al Parque, and Secreatría de Cultura, Recreación y Deporte in Bogotá; Secretaría de Cultura Ciudadana, and Festival Altavoz in Medellín. There are also some international institutions and local governments from other places.

The media were treated as gatekeepers as well. Dealing with media has been something that traditional labels covered, because they have had resources to access radio stations and TV networks, and it is one of the main aspect aggregators lack when compared to old-fashioned labels. Natalia Huertas said: "I call as Pepita Pérez6 to a medium to get a space and I have to lobby a lot, but if someone from SONY calls, just because they are SONY they get an answer, without doing much". "There is strong market saturation, and the space for rock in traditional media is residual". Said Perros de Reseva, explaining how they have to meticulously time their launch strategies to get some attention form media.

Business Networking Events have concentrated a lot of these gatekeepers, and the organizers of these events have been gatekeepers themselves. Andrés Gualdrón explained:

"you apply to the call, they take a look and decide if they like your proposal or not,

and they choose you in case they like it. Then you have time slots and meetings to meet the

bookers closer to your profile… You can get chosen for a showcase, if the event likes you,

they include your proposal in the live show of the event".

There have been two regular big music networking events in Colombia. Circulart in

Medellín and Bogota Music Market (BOmm). Musicians who have not been selected to attend these two tend to take a hit to their ego because of the great opportunities to network presented in these events, "we did not get through, maybe there are other artists that are just starting, (…),

6 This name works in Colombia as “Jane Doe” works in most English-speaking countries, referring to an unknown person. The male version is Pepito Pérez.

55 maybe other types of network… but finally we thought there are other ways of making it, maybe it is not the time, maybe next time… hopefully" Said Banda A. Others took a more practical approach to these events like Book Alakrán:

"last year I got in Circulart without paying and I did not have the rights to be in the

business networking part or anything of that, and I left almost with an agent by my own

skill of knowing how to move in these markets and not being shy… I think. I'm not shy",

Natalia Huertas even linked the growth of the Colombian music industry with the growth of

Circulart and BOmm.

Figure 6 shows a proposed graphic representation of the gatekeepers previously mentioned.

Figure 6

Visual Representation of Gatekeepers

Note: Own creation. The chart shows musicians on the left and the audience on the right. When the box is closer to the audience, it represents how much impact said box has to reach an audience. For example, streaming services, media and bookers have high impact with audiences, while producers do not have it. On the other side, when a box is closer to musicians, it means that participants expressed them as easy to reach. For example, producers are easy to find (close to the left) but their overall impact with the audience is not high (far from the right).

If musicians managed to bridge the gaps to get to a point where the audience has known them and they have reached a big enough audience, the new level of gatekeeping were labels. I did not get into this level of detail because that would have departed from the definition of independent music utilized in this study.

Some of the musicians have used their goodwill from previous projects to boost the new ones, starting from a better position. Boom Alakrán said: "All that experience I had with different logistics companies that believed in me and had called me before for other deals, I told them,

‘man, I have a very novel project, but I need to get paid’".

Gatekeeping has been about an imbalance in power. When musicians start, they do not have an audience, and therefore have to convince people that their music is worth supporting.

The closer they get to the audience, the easier to reach people and the easier it is to reach gatekeepers who are willing to support the projects. Therefore, musicians start getting traction with gatekeepers the more followers and listeners they have. To get support from the more difficult gatekeepers: media, bookers, playlists on streaming services, and even labels that can sign them; musicians need to gather momentum and reach audiences from scratch. The next finding expresses the strategies independent musicians told me they used to grow their audiences.

Finding 2: Own Circulation Strategies

Knowing the Audience

Before I start delving into the actual strategies, I want to explore the answers musicians gave me to the question about how they would describe the audience of their project. Because judging by the depth of that audience, it was possible to understand the type of musicians they were and how involved they were into these strategies.

I created this question without mentioning a particular way of describing an audience because, even if the answers I would get were useless or vague, that would give me some hint of the aim of the band. If they were very specific about an audience type, it would imply a goal more geared towards the public, if the response was more vague, it would imply less focus on the audience and more on their self-expression. Some took the first approach; the majority took the second and only three artists used a mix of both lines. The first and most common answer was close to: my audience is the type of people who like the kind of music I make. The second approach was to answer with demographics. For this sample, the usual way they know how their

58 audiences were composed was based on live performances and seeing the people that showed up to concerts, and some cited statistics that social media and streaming platforms showed them.

None of these were very scientific.

After the question for the audience, I went on to ask about how they reached the audience, how they created release schedules, and how they preferred to release their music.

Strategy 1: Live Music

By far, using live music as a strategy to get audiences to listen to new releases was the most discussed tactic to find new audiences, grow numbers, and earn some money. Illary said:

"we started characterizing the audience and the easiest was to identify the public that, somehow, always came to the concerts". They also considered that live music “keeps you current and generates more activities around the concert itself, the diffusion of the event, (…) the recording is valuable to us because it is evidence of the communication and it generates more activities, it is like a butterfly effect". It is not only performing so the audience can listen to the songs or get to know the band, live music provides a window for other marketing ventures that can contribute to the sustainability of the band.

Even though most participants’ usage of live music can be thought as a circulation strategy, they did not consider it a main “strategy”, but more of an encounter. Caro Jaramillo said: "Look, I imagine you are going to ask me about platforms, and I am not active there” showing that artists consider activities a circulation strategy only if they related to marketing, but

Caro Jaramillo also said: “I feel the main experience of people and audience I have is through live shows". The question was about the way she communicated with her audience, and she immediately thought of social media, even though I explicitly said, "not necessarily social media". After discussing the reasons for her not to believe in social media, she finished her

59 response with a short glimpse of her main strategy: "the other is through concerts, a bunch of live music".

Live music is considered a good activity for audience research, a place to showcase new songs and survey audience response. Boom Alakrán had a very clear objective for their live shows: "people got crazy in our concerts, if Boom Alakrán plays at 2 p. m. they dance". And that has been how they measure the success of their band. If people dance, it means the song is good.

Kukos Band said: "I like playing a song before recording it. I think it grounds the song, especially with the audience response, it is a good strategy". Not only that, live music has been also about proving the musicians' skills "because now with postproduction so many things can be done, the work can have low credibility (…) and live music is where they really see you" said

Nami when discussing how important live music was for their project. Andrea said: "for me that is the most important aspect, because it is when you really connect with the audience". Camilo

Bartelsman said: "with the flow of the audience, if people get to the concerts, a lot or a little, it indicates a lot".

There are three aspects of live music that were linked with other strategies: networking, marketing, and public policies. Illary and Perros de Reserva have started holding their own festivals as a way of gathering other musicians, bringing them from abroad and performing together. This has given them clout and opportunities to do networking at the same time they have created other sources of revenue for the band. Merchandising has always been intrinsically linked with live music. Illary said "when we play live, nobody resists a purchase. They buy whatever. You put a cup with your drawing, and they buy it because the excitement of the moment is so big, that anything is saleable then". Some government policies have boosted live music and government funded festivals have been free for the audience and contributed to the

60 musicians' recognition and clout. They have helped musicians reach the audience and allowed them to say they have shared stage with those big names that usually lead important festivals like the aforementioned Rock al Parque and Altavoz.

There is room for innovation in live music. Lucas Hill has tried unorthodox venues: "I have tried to move the project, not so much in the club, bars, and specialized venues scene, but in different venues like yoga studios or open spaces. Wellness festivals. It (the project) has that line of not being typecast in just music venues”.

Touring

When participants expressed the need to broaden their audience, touring was mentioned as a necessary venture. Wishful thinking went: conquering the local audience, then national, and then international, as 4to de Mente put it:

"5 years ago I used to say ‘easy, we play Altavoz in Medellín, then Rock al Parque

in Bogotá, then Video Latino in Mexico and then onwards, the United States is open and

then it is Europe… I wish life were that easy and there were a manual". Touring is a

difficult endeavour because it entails investment, logistics and risk, but musicians see

many rewarding benefits in touring.

Because live music has been the fastest way of growing an audience, musicians have started with local venues, and then they have tried going to other cities in Colombia. Niyireth said: "the trajectory has been traced trying to bring this type of music to all the places I can, different regions first (…) each time trying to reach a farther place". The main cities that were mentioned were Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Pereira, and Manizales.

There were some complaints about the national touring scene. Arrierians said: "Setting up a tour in Colombia, even for big bands like Atercipelados, is a problem. There is nowhere to

61 play, no big venues, and to summon people is hard". Lucas Hill said: "I think it is cool to explore the Colombian circuit, it is difficult. It is like, we do not have it… it does not exist yet, it could… it would be interesting". But when artists manage to tour, they see their social media numbers improve for the locations they visit.

International touring is more difficult. It is more expensive, and participants have had the need to be smart about it to make it work. Perros de Reserva have done three international tours and they have played in four countries, including Canada. They have used resources they get from festivals or government subsidies to reach as many places as they can. Networking with other musicians was also widely mentioned when discussing international tours. The main international touring destination for Colombian musicians has been Mexico and, after that, the neighbouring Perú and Ecuador. After the region, the most mentioned place was Europe, only

France and Spain stood out as specific countries. Unless invited to particular events or festivals, other countries were not mentioned.

Strategy 2: Heavy Use of Social Media

Social media has had a history of being linked to music. Myspace, mentioned by Niyireth as "the best for musicians", was a good network for musicians because it had a focus on music, adding players and special profiles for musicians and their fans (Wilkinson & Thelwall, 2010).

According to the findings of this study, that history has held true and musicians have heavily used social media to communicate with their audiences. "Mainly, social networks are the space to interact with this audience" were the words of Aleteos and Kukos Band.

Instagram, even though it is a photo and video sharing social media, has been the go-to social media for these musicians, "It is my strongest social network" is how Banda B, Boom

Alakrán, Maga, and Taller de Retazos described it. Only one of the participants did not have an

62 account for the project and a lot of them measured their success through followers, which is the reason I also used it to describe the bands’ success.

YouTube has been a more difficult platform, but according to the way participants described it, it was more rewarding to have a successful channel there. Banda B said: "I do not care that, on Instagram, there are I-don't-know-how-many followers if YouTube is not working well."

In general, social networks have opened a channel that participants have considered direct to consumer, and the participants have also used them to understand their demographics, determine where their projects have an audience and sometimes use them to plan advertising and other strategies.

Maga was a particular case about the use of social media. She achieved fame in

Colombia through a reality show called Desafío de Guerreros, and you could see how many followers she has compared to her monthly listeners. Her case is particular because she is working the other way around, she is using her fame as a social media influencer to reach listeners.

Strategy 3: A Lot of Secondary Texts

Video Killed the Radio Star, the first video aired on MTV, remains true even though there is Internet Killed the Video Star, but The Buggles are still correct. “Instead of having a band, I have an audiovisual collective, yes, because now it is: 'do the live', 'do the video', 'take the picture'”, said 4o de Mente, while Banda A said: “The band needs to generate content, and that is the priority this year, especially for YouTube.”

In addition, coordinating the release of songs with secondary texts, especially the videos, has become one of the main decisions for any release. Banda A explained: "Sometimes, when it

(the song) is out on platforms the campaign for the videoclip starts, because the audio is supposed to come out first. There are people who release both at the same time. I do not know what is the key, but… for us, the strategy was to release the videoclip after the audio got out on platforms, almost a month after."

Some participants even considered other texts not secondary, but at the same level with the music. Banda B said: "I have been releasing some videoclips with every song, because my main profession is being a filmmaker (…) the project is a whole universe (…) I am releasing seven videoclips, seven video blogs, seven songs, seven works… well, like seven illustrations that I am working on". And being able to release all this material is for Banda B what would make the project successful.

Perros de Reserva have released eight music videos, the online role-playing game

Océanos del tiempo and the graphic novel Los vampiros de la carretera. They did not consider this a multi-platform strategy to reach audience but "another kind of artistic output that, we feel, complements our work (…) maybe yes, it is a strategy to grow the community". They have understood their audience and know these secondary texts have made possible to connect with them.

Natalia Huertas talked about using music to do other things like playing it at art shows that generate cultural change. For example, some of her projects have involved art shows where indigenous cultures have been showcased and take centre stage inside an electronic dance music show.

Strategy 4: Networking and Using Other Musicians’ Clout

"We are part of a network called Sonamos Latinoamérica, 50 antennae in 14 countries.

We get together and organize everything" said Illary. This has been a strategy shared by

64 musicians who had toured abroad. From the interviews, I inferred that the possibilities of touring abroad grew exponentially from having friends and network connections with a captive audience. These friends can help the travelling musicians find venues, sponsors and even a possible audience. It has been a two-way street. "It is important that you are strong in your own territory, because exchanges are key for circulation, and you cannot offer an exchange if you do not have an audience in your city", said Perros de Reserva.

The main event for creating a successful network has been Business Networking Events, where networking is more about public relations than music. "I remember one time I treated a programmer to a Whisky bottle; we drank it together and thanks to that we ended up in Mexico the following year" said Andrés Gualdrón who expressed that more than working with labels and companies, his work is geared towards people. This has worked for him, as he has been to

México DF, Guadalajara, San José, Buenos Aires, and Quito with this strategy.

Networking has not only been with people in the music industry. I already mentioned

Natalia Huertas and her art showcases, Aristi discussed projects done with a midwife in order to release his song Abuelita guardiana. Perros de Reserva mentioned how his mise en scène required a lot of artists. There were also mentions of journalists, and politicians and private companies that can invest money.

Strategy 5: Merchandising and the Album as an Object

Merchandising has been very traditional for musicians. Selling t-shirts and mugs is not a surprising finding here. The reason I put it here is because musicians have started seeing print copies of albums as merchandising. Lately, an album —as CD, tape or vinyl— has been considered an object. Music lives in digital online form and the CD works as a business card where all of the information for the project can be found.

Vinyl has started to appeal to the romantics and was seen as a collector’s item. 4to de

Mente, Andrés Gualdrón, Banda A, Banda B, Boom Alakrán, Caro Jaramillo, and Lucas Hill mentioned vinyl in their projects, but the only one that considered it business was Boom Alakrán, the rest accepted that a romantic view of the object is the key reason they wanted their music printed in vinyl.

Strategy 7: Free Press

One of the roles independent musicians needed to take is how to deal with the media. In traditional industry, labels have had this covered and there have been people whose jobs were to push projects. What some participants have done is to send out press releases to the contacts in their database and hope for the best. It was not a strategy they discussed a lot; they just mentioned it.

Derived Findings

These findings relate to the second research question: “How are these circulation strategies affecting musicians' perspective of the Colombian music industry?”

Finding 3: Genre Is a Toy to Break Apart and Put Together Again

Genre is supposed to be a characteristic of the music, describing the sounds, the rhythms, the instruments used, the style. However, for these musicians the audience defined the genre, not the music. Taller de Retazos told me it was a topic difficult to discuss and that was true for most interviews. Participants thought it was hard to put a label on their music. This came up very often in the answers to the first question I asked participants. This first question, “What is the story of your project and what is its genre?” was meant to be an icebreaker but it was very apparent that, by my wording, I hit a nerve of the changes that were happening.

For most of the participants, genre was deep-rooted, even if it was a concept they disliked and wanted to work against, it was always present and very difficult to change. They could love it or hate it, but genre has been very present in their labour. "If I had to file it in a genre…", "…it is difficult to put it (the band) in a squared box of a genre", "nowadays it is difficult to be in just one genre", were common expressions. “They have kept us, especially in Medellín, stuck in genre, in conservatism, in the moral, in a vast number of things that don’t allow us to see beyond these mountains” explained Book Alakrán.

A pure genre was seen as control of self-expression and therefore must be deconstructed and reinterpreted to be something new and worthy of pursuing creatively. Usually, pure genre has been meant for commercial music, and independent musicians must rebel to create something novel that would not resemble “commercial music”. Although it was interesting that musicians who identified themselves with just one “pure” genre spoke briefly about it, the ones who do not like to work within predetermined categories elaborate more on genre and spoke in length about how they play with that concept.

The urban genre occupied a special place in some musicians’ minds, usually in the form of reguetón, which is, in their words, the most commercial genre. Artists felt like commercial reguetón pushed by big labels has been stealing their fanbase, because it has been commercial music with a lot of money to invest in marketing. 4o de Mente considered rock part of the urban genre, and within this urban genre, "there is discord between urban and rock". Perros de reserva used the term “audience formation” to refer to their marketing activities with less money, almost artisanal, dwarfed by the millions spent on marketing by reguetón.

I also found what Ochoa & Botero (2009) described with “fusion musics”: city-dweller artists (who were born in cities or moved in from somewhere else) that like music from the

67 peripheries (geographical and cultural) of the country. In the sample I found fusions with music from Caribbean, Pacific, coffee belt (the mountainous territory where coffee is grown), and eastern plain regions; even with indigenous muisca music.

Latin American music as a genre is another term used to describe the music. When musicians used this word, they usually meant different types of music that are only put together in the same category because of location. For example, Aristi and Caro Jaramillo, when they refered to Latin American sounds, they talked about taking inspiration from protest singer- songwriters traditionally linked with the political left, even though they meant to make non- political music. Illary and Taller de Retazos discussed the sense of belonging and the territory.

Lucas Hill mentioned it as inspiration.

Aristi, Caro Jaramillo and Lucas Hill mentioned singer-songwriter as a genre in itself, that borrowed from other genres, but still, it was their main genre.

A very fascinating example of working and innovating with genre, and it can be thought of as a description of how these “fusion musics” were created, was Boom Alakrán. Their lead

Malhechor, according to his words, was a being integrally made of salsa. But after a crisis, he decided to create retumba, a genre in itself that I dare describe as rhythmic eclecticism.

Malhechor said:

“To find a new rhythm we put seventy rhythms in one rack, and I had to suck it up

and hear how that sounded. And there were seventy rhythms I had recorded with all of my

instruments. And there was a moment when I said ‘look how this sounds’ and I stole it (…)

and that is how I got a dembó with a songo with a caja vallenata and I fused a Chilean

drum and made a rhythm (…) combining the jazz experience, squared gringa music, the

dancehall and the colours of boogaloo. This makes possible a fusion of Colombian Pacific,

Caribbean and Andean music into one song, creating things like Brazilian Arabic music”.

These drastic fusions were well received by the audience because it appeals to every style and, in the end, it has been music that makes people dance.

Lucas Hill has known the North American music industry (he has worked and studied in

Boston and New York), and he considered what makes Colombian music different is the lack of a mature entertainment industry, which has provided more liberty to create outside the predefined boundaries of genres.

In conclusion, genre for Colombian musicians has been helpful to find a place in the world of music, to find and reach audiences and other musicians. However, it was not constricting, the musicians have been comfortable with and more than willing to destroy it, take it apart, put it back together and create new genres. This finding was close to what Ochoa &

Botero (2009) describe as “fusion musics”.

Finding 4: The Meaning of Colombian in “Colombian Music” and ¿Dónde está el chucu chucu?

When I was recruiting participants, and for the sake of being concise, I wrote in the

WhatsApp groups "I am looking for independent Colombian musicians". A musician who did not participate in this study asked me “What is a Colombian musician? Shakira doesn't come to

Colombia, Does she count? and What about a Colombian who lives abroad?”

Defining Colombia and what makes music Colombian is very difficult. Cumbia and vallenato have been the biggest exports; bambuco, guabina, and joropo are also Colombian rhythms. But you can find Mexican cumbia, Chilean cumbia and the most peculiar of them all, cumbia villera born in the slums of Argentina. Is cumbia Colombian? Salsa is originally from

New York born from Caribbean rhythms, but Cali is a city in Colombia called the capital of salsa. Is salsa caleña (from Cali) and therefore Colombian? To the WhatsApp inquiry I replied expanding the definitions and it was settled, but the question of what Colombian music is, should not be taken lightly.

A recurrent theme in answers to “What is making Colombian music successful abroad?” was how mixed the culture and therefore the music has been. In Colombia (and in all of Latin

America) indigenous, European, African, and Arabic cultures coexist. Colombian cultural capital has Caribbean and Pacific music that sounds upbeat and coexists with Andean styles that sound nothing alike. Colombian musicians have been able to play with a lot of rhythms, and they have loved the freedom of being able to use any type of beat, instruments, metric, even languages.

They have experimented with mixing and matching all of these. Arrierians put it like this:

“Ballet Folklórico de Antioquia (a ballet company based in Medellín) have 10 routines and they are all different… a Swedish person would find it incredible that a guareña and a mapalé are from the same country because they are so different.”

But there is a caveat about Colombian music. The most interesting way of describing the expectations you have to fulfill to be successful came from Natalia Huertas, who has been involved in project that tends to be academic and experimental. People have consistently asked her: “And where is the tumpa tumpa?”. Tumpa tumpa is an onomatopoeia that means to imitate the sound upbeat music has, the drums in the background that compel anyone to follow. There is also chucu chucu, that refers to the sound of the guiro in cumbia and vallenato. Kukos Band called it “a closed mindset… or better, a focused mindset in danceable music”. It is the only thing that has been anticipated from Colombian music, within and outside Colombia, “I think that is what the world expects from us, something rhythmical.”

Finding 5: Being in the Music Industry Is About Learning Constantly

When I asked musicians why they wanted to participate in this study, they said they were interested to know the results. I can link this with a recurrent theme I found during the interviews: the lack of knowledge about the industry has been big problem for novice musicians, especially the gaps in the knowledge about particular aspects of something as complex as intellectual property laws.

It has been a costly part of the process of making and releasing music. Maga explained that:

"I launched my first song and video, but then I realized that I did not know so

much about the industry, it was not an easy process. A lot of money was invested, and it

was gone easily, (…) there was no continuity. I decided to get to know the industry a lot

better and, at some other moment, to do things a lot better".

Niyireth, who described with detailed knowledge her particular music scene (Andean music), was outspoken about her constant learning process, mentioning that she was aware that she was behind on some new topics. "In these past times I have had to put on my batteries because I am behind on that (digital distribution)", she said, explaining how the quarantine and COVID-19 restrictions killed live music, which has been her main income source. She added: "I was doing it, but now I have to do it by force."

As musicians get to know the business, and understand legal protection, contracts, and IP laws; they realize it is serious business. This was especially true for independent musicians and it has been a cause for frustration, because in an ideal world, they could just concentrate on the music and not deal with the business side. "(Marketing) implies a lot of work, and I have mixed feelings about that because sometimes you only want to dedicate time for music and that is it" is

71 how Andrea from Balandra and Cachicamo put it. Some of the participants decided it is part of the craft and assume it is a learning process.

To circumvent the lack of knowledge, some musicians have found someone else to do this work; however, it comes with caveats like losing control, insecurities about trust or having to pay a lot of money. This has not been a problem exclusive to Colombian musicians. It has been a recurrent theme for artists to feel cheated out of their music because they signed a contract they did not understand.

Others struggle to find someone who would take care of it. There was a special case which exemplifies the tension within the decisions taken by different members of a single band.

Banda A was split into two, one side decided business and legal issues were an unavoidable part of the growth of the band, whereas the other side decided any talk of legal issues and administrative matters would take away from the joy of music and preferred to stay a small band than to grow and deal with it. At the time of the interview, the band had a meeting planned to talk about the future of the band.

Finding 6: Distrust Everyone

Building a team is hard, and that was evidenced in the words of participants. Banda A expressed how "…personally I feel projects are cool when you get together with friends and beautiful things come up, but you have to make serious agreements from the beginning, otherwise everything can go to waste."

Some participants also said that they got the idea of creating new projects and abandoning old ones because of relationship problems with other band members or former managers. Banda B stated that monthly paid managers "…do not work, I think artists have to take on their whole projects and do the leg work", they said that, if you give it to someone else,

72 there would be promises of marvelous things around the corner, that could set the artist up for disappointment.

I discuss companies and services in another finding, but for now I want to state musicians' feelings about labels, aggregators, marketing companies, producers, bookers, streaming services, etc. Aristi put them in a very concise manner: "we need each other, but I do not have a great perception of them". Lucas Hill said that "these are companies that support you, but they take away from you as well". They felt like the industry has been going towards large companies that share the same business model of having many small artists, each contributing a little to their bottom line. This has made them feel like cogs in a machine they could not control and that has given them little to no return after they have made the initial investment of resources to begin their projects and make them successful.

Women had particular complaints about sexism and indecent proposals. There has been an extra layer of uneasiness for women in music. People have expected them to use their bodies to sell their music and they expressed that it makes it harder for them to trust people in the industry.

Despite this distrust, services are essential for independent musicians and they have known it. Their solution has been to learn to work with them and to understand their rights and how much they have been willing to give up. Each artist has had a different line depending on the bands’ goals and their personal feelings.

The more power they have given to any third party, the bigger the mistrust has been. The most difficult transaction would be with a label, as these could take the prize to the most untrusting companies for musicians. There were two visions about being signed with a label. The least common was saying that if there comes the opportunity to sign with a label, they would do

73 it with extreme care about the contract, because they were not willing to give up much… but it would be nice to have a group of people handling everything apart from the music. The most common answer to whether they would sign with a major label or not, was that this was not even a possibility, partly because musicians did not view it as viable as their music is not commercial, and also because they thought that receiving money from companies meant giving up too much creativity. They preferred niche labels that would give them the leverage to enter radio stations, production circles and playlists that are too far out of reach for entirely independent musicians.

Finding 7: Tension Between Commerce and Creativity

In the literature review I covered this topic, but researchers and authors usually discuss the tension between creative individuals and market minded people. I interviewed independent musicians that, by the definition I decided to work with, were the same persons performing different jobs. This meant that the creativity and the commerce side of the business coexisted within one single mind or different minds in one band. What I found fits in with what the authors said, but it had some interesting turns because of that coexistence, most wondered about where the line of finding an audience and becoming marketing gurus was, a band fighting over the concepts of industry, or persons choosing carefully their own words to not sound like marketing specialists. Some examples follow below.

After I asked how they defined their audience, 4o de Mente responded "at what point art is a sustainable project and at what point it becomes only profit and marketing and strategies to reach an audience?" A question they answered themselves when they said “we (the whole band) have talked about it and the first thing we look for is to be happy with our creations… we would love to be known but we would like for that reach to be organic". Arrierians, when discussing strategies to reach their audience mentioned organic work with their followers combined with

74 paid advertising. Banda B said that right now “the work is more organic than ten years ago”.

When asked how they had achieved having an audience outside of Colombia Caro Jaramillo and

Kukos Band replied that it was organic growth, as an opposite of a planned strategy. The word organic caught my attention because musicians talked about it as the opposite of planned strategic growth, when it is an expression that relates to business and social media, and they defined it as the growth that comes without paying for expanding the reach of a publication.

Musicians are comfortable with the idea of reaching an audience but paying any amount for it makes success inauthentic.

In the literature review I talked about a continuum about the creativity vs commerce tension. I found a varied range of opinions in the sample and I cannot say musicians are leaning towards one or the other. On the more creative leaning side, I found opinions that were close to a

"I do and will do my art without thinking of my audience and if they come and listen, it is good for them, but I am never compromising". On the other side I found opinions of the type of “I want this project to become important and I want to make a living of it, I do not mind compromising a little if that means growing an audience and being able to keep on working with music as my primary source of income.”

On the creative side, I found reticence when words that resembled marketing were mentioned. Perros de Reserva is a rock band with a thought-provoking approach to circulation.

Of all of the musicians, they were the ones with the most peculiar stage direction and the most secondary texts. They have had 7 years of history and a lot of secondary texts. They seemed to be doing a by-the-book strategy of multi-platform texts to reach a particular audience. However, when I asked about their strategies or how they do audience research, they immediately shut down my question. "I do not guide myself with what the audience looks for, I am trying to

75 express myself with authenticity and freedom". However, when I changed my language to avoid marketing questions and talked more about communication strategies, they started discussing how they "grow the community" to reach more people with the music. As a novice researcher, I found it interesting to see how different the answers were depending on the wording of the questions.

This tension was more apparent when I asked the final question, that was meant to act as the concluding segment where I connected with the participants, made jokes and asked for any extra information. The answers started to sound repetitive, each musician in their own way said:

“I want to make music and be heard but I do not want to compromise too much”. Usually, the aim is to make the projects sustainable and be able to work full time on it. "Obviously I want to reach even more people, but I would never sacrifice mine or my family's wellbeing to get there" was the final sentence Aristi said before telling me he had to go and take care of his newborn son who is also a big inspiration for his new music. "As long as the project is self-sustainable, I would consider it a major success" were Arrierians' words. Boom Alakrán were very emphatic in the self-expression they wanted to achieve: "Success for my project is that I found a place in the world where I want to say all I ever wanted to say… it is a free project, and it is impossible to file in a predetermined drawer.”

Finding 8: The Colombian Music Industry

The bigger aim for this research has been to understand the Colombian music industry, because it might shed light into the Colombian cultural industries. This is the reason I chose to leave the last finding as an overview. I treated these topics and questions with extreme care, because I know that talking about this sometimes means discussing friendships, partnerships, livelihood, self-expression, and ego. Musicians were always friendly but started with cautious

76 answers. At the end of many interviews, after I stopped recording, they continued discussing the industry with less restrain because the red dot that signals being recorded was gone. A lot of these conversations became notes on my research and in a couple of cases I managed to link them to a particular part of the recorded interviews and transcripts.

The industry is full of noise

Participants in this study talked about the industry as being in constant shift, this meant feelings of instability, constant learning and exploration. These shifts were usually sparked by digital technologies and platforms. This goes in line with the literature review, as cultural industries are always shifting and advancements in technology hasten this process.

A common impression when they talked about the Colombian music scene, is that it does not really exist as an industry, but it is getting there. There are some necessities, and the main one that was expressed was that nobody is in charge. "I feel there is chaos (…) it is strange because there is work, there are bands, consumption and money… sort of. But there is a lot of noise", said Aristi using appropriate musical metaphors to describe the state of the music industry.

There is also a sense of fear about these industrial ideas might end up pushing the expression to the backburner or putting it down completely in favor of money and pure business.

There were comparisons with sausage factories, bakeries, pizza franchises, and sports shoes multinational companies. All of them symbols (in their minds) of extreme soul-less capitalism.

There is also a feeling of being let down by the idea of a wider industry that does not exist anymore. "Those rock stars we saw, they do not really exist, they are just an image constructed by the industry", said Banda B. "We are not thinking of being famous or millionaires or become rock stars, that does not happen anymore, those were the eighties", said Arrierians.

"There are artists that get constructed with the image of the rock star, those are good, but they

77 disappear. I prefer being close to my audience", said Caro Jaramillo. I chose a recurring theme of the disappearing idea of rock star, but it was not just that. It was also about labels not investing in novel projects to make them succeed; it was about people not being interested in a particular genre anymore and flocking to the “urban” genre, relegating rock (or mostly rock) to a secondary genre. I coded these ideas with the word romanticism about the industry, a word Andrés

Gualdrón and Arrierians used to describe these ideas that put self-expression and old ideas above all else. There are two changes that are clearly happening, even though these self- proclaimed romantic musicians fight them: the loss of the album as the biggest outcome of music, and the move to digital distribution and the lack of a physical copy of the music.

Single, EP, Album

The industry has been moving towards a world where releasing singles periodically would be the best strategy to keep a constant stream of content that would keep the audience engaged. Most of the musicians that participated in this study knew this and they were very aware of how the industry has changed because streaming services have made releasing a single something as easy as clicking a button. "Audience, somehow, let's say it is only a few who are interested in buying an album or getting access to a record", said Aleteos. Arrierians explained:

"It is not the same thing to release an album and let two years go by and then

releasing another album, rather than, with more frequency, offering something to the little

or big audience you have. If you keep uploading music, showing what you are doing, I

think that works well."

"That is how the market is, and people consume singles more than whole albums", said Camilo

Bartlesman. "From the point of view of generating an audience, I think it builds more of an audience each single than a whole album" said Lucas Hill.

Niyireth explained how she used to be able to plan an album as a project. She crafted a business plan for each album and forecasted how many copies of the album she was going to sell when she would tour. She usually calculated and managed to reach the break-even point. She noticed that in 2015 it changed because distribution became digital and she has had to adapt to the new market logic.

Taller de Retazos said: "Releasing albums is very difficult because it is like releasing all the bullets in the same shot (…) albums have an internal conceptual consistency; they are created to be round". But now they are creating an album divided in four parts to counteract that,

"releasing an album is a conceptual decision, but somehow you can make art decisions that are a little… how to say it… mercantile”.

These musicians are aware of the market they are in and how their audience consumes music. Boom Alakrán put it this way: "I believe strategies need to be taken depending on how the boat is rocking". However, most of them still aim to release an album. "You work for a long time in a determined set of songs and there is the need to create a full stop to that process, saying it is done. Releasing an album is a good way of doing it", said Arrierians.

Physical format vs digital music

Same as musicians deem the album something to strive for, even though they have understood music reaches audiences more easily when it is formatted as singles, they have accepted that the world has moved to a stage where digital music sells more easily, but the physical format has continued to be the goal, being vinyl, cassette, or compact disc.

A common occurrence has been that the bands started with a romantic idea of creating an album and they worked hard to reach the end of the process. It was long, but they enjoyed it.

When they released the album and printed some copies, they were super happy, but they realized

79 the CDs were as good as a cheap business card that people threw away or just did not receive.

Then, they gave them away for free or remained with a box of unsold copies. For their second album they would decide to invest all of that money into something more useful. Taller de

Retazos said:

"We released the physical album, and we also had other objects that were super

cool, that in fact, sold a lot, like notepads with the album lyrics and a digital download

code, we also launched general merchandising; cups, mugs that were very cute and moved

a lot. But the disc itself, that we printed and invested in printing… there I have a box with

one hundred records that has not moved".

They have seen live music as the moment to sell merchandise, and the albums have also sold when they have played live, but it has started to not move as much as t-shirts and merchandising products. Niyireth talked about her audience and described them as older and therefore more "behind on distribution", she said that they still like the physical copy of the albums, but the volume of sales has reduced considerable. But she was aware that the audience of folkloric music (her audience) is particular and not the norm.

"Printed copies of music have lost their value as bulk sales, but they have increased their values as a work of art", said Illary. "Vinyl and even cassette tapes have become cult objects" said Caro Jaramillo. "We want to release, especially a vinyl, we would like to make a vinyl, almost like a limited edition, a commemorative object (…) selling it almost like for collectors" said Lucas Hill. It is a digital singles world, but they are romantics, they want the physical album as a complete work of art with a unifying concept that tells a whole story.

I do not intend to dismiss the romanticism or to call the participants to this study naïve.

Boom Alakran understood market logics and reached the same conclusion:

"My band has an electronic sound, but everything is organic. Everything is

recorded with real instruments, everything is physical, and therefore… and here there is

some romanticism… there is an interesting business opportunity. If I release these records,

and it is a business that is working again. Vinyl is selling again, so I want to get into that

business.”

Boom Alakrán expressed the importance of understanding the logic of the market and developing a project that appeals to the romantic side of the musician and the people who ultimately would support it. Caro Jaramillo, going back to the singles vs album, said:

"Me and my producer are migrating to other ideas, where the most probable is

releasing a single, make it work for Spotify playlists and then releasing the album. It is a

middle ground I would like, (…) because I still think an album is built around a narrative

with a line that goes from the beginning to the end."

These decisions defined independence for the musicians, it has been merging old and new, art and commerce and finding a middle ground to make it work.

The business of being independent

“The industry can be ferocious in many aspects (…) if you as an artist stop doing your work for a moment, well, you do not exist anymore" said Natalia Huertas, "everyone is very selective in the type of projects they choose, in how, when, if there is money (…) my projects have been typecast very quickly and it is very difficult”. If I listened to the participants and thought of them as entrepreneurs, I would have thought they were not sane, going into high-risk projects with low chances of success and even less chances of getting a sensible return of their investments. But it was clear that the music in itself was enough for them to shoot to get some sort of success.

Any industry has been built on new projects, especially music; but to convince people, musicians have needed to start from scratch and invest their own resources. At this stage is where the circulation strategies described become important. They have started with an idea and managed to get some traction through the use of live shows, social media, friends, etc. Once musicians started seeing audience numbers go up on streaming services and online stores, doors have started opening up for them: festivals, label deals, service providers, media, etc. Being smart about public relations would be very useful in this stage, because managing connections well could start building up and it could mean better deals for tours etc. Musicians expressed that it is unfair that, after they make the initial risky investment, companies have started picking up projects once the success was more or less proven.

This is the golden spot to reach and it was somehow what most of my participants wanted to achieve when I interviewed them. Natalia Huertas talked about another musician who already achieved it and continued being independent:

"He released his new album, and it is strictly independent, even having all of the

infrastructure to be able to use commercial strategies (meaning big labels who seize

creative control of projects). He pays his own press in Mexico, Colombia, the United States

and everywhere else, but he knows now what he wants to say, how to get to media, how to

do his own management".

It comes down to resources. Being independent and making projects work has a lot to do with successful management of resources, where money is only one of them, next to credibility, network, time, and knowledge. Boom Alakrán went into a full discourse about the possibilities infinite money would offer a novel artist: hiring producers, studios, sound mixers, masters, distributors, advertising, community managers, etc. but "while you have your band and your

82 rehearsals in your mom's garage, all of those people need to be you, if you manage to make it, they will get interested in you and give you festivals where they pay well."

Most of them had pondered on their status as independent musicians and the difficulties that came with it. When I discussed the possibility of signing with a big international label, most of them were very clear that it would never happen, not because they refused to do it, but because they were aware of their audience and how niche their music was. It seemed that, unless you are in the urban category, particularly reguetón, public is not massive and therefore their creations do not appeal to big labels. However, most of them do accept that, if there is a deal where they can give control of "marketing" and "promoting" to a third party, they would consider it. Camilo Bartelsman touched a point when he said: "other than getting payed to compose, I think the fact that there is a business transaction in the middle of it, of that size, it implies that probably they are going to make decisions on what you do". Nonetheless, and going back to distrust, some have encountered dishonest people that have promised more than they can deliver, and they have heard stories about deals where the musicians end up owing money to the record labels or other type of companies or people who have identified themselves as providers of services. Finding someone to take care of business is almost utopic.

Andrés Gualdrón talked about the big labels where you have to give up a lot creatively,

"but there are some intermediate labels" that are focused on niche markets, and he says that is the right path for his projects. Boom Alakrán says "If the devil appears to me and tells me: 'you go on making music because you will get people working for you… but you have to start wearing

Nike clothes because you will sign with them'… the answer is no". It comes to retaining creative integrity, and not having to give up too much is the first line of importance for the participants. In conclusion, the biggest fear they have is losing control of the project, artistically or financially.

Even when they think of signing some deals with any company, they tend to favour keeping control over their creations.

Other than signing with labels (big or small), another path for growth is creating a new label to start creating the synergies labels use to distribute music. Maybe promoting other likeminded musicians. In fact, following the case of Banda A, the member that became more focused in growth decided, after seeing how successful the band was getting, to create a small label and providing services to the band, while seeking others to help them. His reasoning was that legal problems and royalty issues could be resolved if the band had a legal person representing them, especially before the Copyright collection societies. However, for some of the other members of the band this is a betrayal of the idea of "independence", this member of

Band A is becoming a suit. This person said: "People shut themselves down, 'we are an independent guild'… and when you go see it, people are not working together, it is to each their own".

There is also the feeling that traditional industry just does not work anymore, it is dying and whatever they do now to get new artists are just last-ditch efforts before the new order of the industry. Banda B states, "a lot of people are afraid of losing those privileged places, (…) finally now with these distribution platforms that only charge a small percentage, everything becomes more homogeneous. These companies with big names are starting to get scared because finally the payola business is ending, these getting money for doing nothing and keeping rights to the music for doing nothing."

Another side effect of being independent is how fragile the operation becomes, and this is showing particularly true when artists discuss dealing with COVID-19 related restrictions. Boom

Alakrán says: "I became the frontman, the dj, the singer, the drummer, the producer, I became

84 everything the pandemic is demanding, and I did it one year ago (…) people kept telling me 'you should not do that, you don't have enough time to practice your music while you're doing other things' (…) but now everybody is worried, paying to learn how to use a console and make it sound good".

Juan José Peña has two projects, and he is a good example of understanding how to balance with commerce. He said Escotes does not exist, it is a project that wants to achieve self- expression and not much else, while Alas 3 is a project aimed mostly at reaching an audience and making a profit, while also providing some self-expression.

Talking about money was not defined within the scope of this study, but musicians talked about it. Making a living from music is difficult in Colombia. Several artists mentioned how financially difficult it is to have a musical project.

The thought of living off of music also seems to be at odds with artistic expression. "You live in the stratosphere of the artist where ego is big and that is how you see yourself, but you come crashing to the real world and understand that there are money things and aesthetics things" said 4to de Mente. Andrés Gualdrón said: "I'm thinking of a new project, tropical experimental music geared towards the dance floor (…) it is being thought in a more shameless and less romantic way."

Using the projects to boost other more commercial ventures is another way musicians live off of their music. Aristi Said "An income source for this project is producing others, it seems like another thing, but if I had not done my project, other people would have never approached me asking me for help."

The other source of income for a lot of musicians are government funded festivals and concerts, and grants that give public money for artistic creation and sometimes circulation.

Colombian policies

The coda for the findings chapter is about the topic that started this whole work which deals with answering the question, “What is the perspective of musicians about Colombian cultural policies?”. To answer this, I used two questions in my questionnaire which were meant to complement each other. To bring each interview to a close, I asked them, “Moving away from your particular project, do you think the Colombian industry is doing something that is setting it apart from the region or the world?”. The question was vague enough to elicit diverse answers.

The follow-up question was, “There are Colombian policies for the industry, have these helped you?”. Apart from the answers to these questions, participants mentioned support from the government when we discussed other topics.

I already mentioned the institutions that have become the face of Colombian cultural policies, mainly Ministerio de Cultura and the local entities in charge of cultural development.

Anually, Mincultura releases different calls for artists. They need to present projects in different stages of development and they compete for these. It is called Programa Nacional de Estímulos and for 2020 they amounted to COP 24.000 million, around CAD 9,000,000 (Programa Nacional de Estímulos: escenario de oportunidades, w.d.). Musicians explained that they had earned money to boost creation and touring. There were no mentions of anything else.

All of them, when they mentioned getting money to boost their projects, praised the policies. But there were some criticisms:

• It is not enough. Andrea said “it is very difficult to earn one, I mean, it is cool that

it exists but if you really want to support the music community you need

something that covers more people”. Boom Alakrán used a comparison: “France,

a welfare state, makes a big investment in culture; it represents 4% of their GDP”.

• It might be too much. I put the first to together to show how the contrast, that

even exists within one interview, Caro Jaramillo said “I have the feeling that it is

insufficient and there is a problem in how they are oriented because it generates

artists dependency on the State and does not create sustainable projects.” Nami

said: “In fact, a lot of artists from Medellín survive through those grants and

benefits; they are called Creation Stimuli”. Perros de Reserva, talking about state

funded festivals that are free for the audience, said “you have to be careful,

because if bands are confident only in free, nothing else is going to work and they

will remain in a bubble.” There is a feeling that it creates an over reliance on

government support for the arts and so the state becomes the patron and people

stop looking for an audience because their only client is the government.

• Some musicians, especially the ones that live outside the main cities or used to

live in the countryside and moved to the city, criticize these policies because they

are centralized. Aleteos, who live outside Medellín, said: “These policies are

centralized in the big cities and regions that are far from this centrality, it is hard

to get access to information and how to apply for these”.

The feeling I got from these interactions about policies is that musicians consider it poorly designed because politicians legislate without input from all of the actors. Caro Jaramillo called it “PowerPoint policies” or “desktop policies”. In the literature review I also spoke about the constitution and how this document explicitly says that Colombia is not a centralized government, but in practice this is not the case. This disparity can also be seen in these interviews. Musicians explained how little coordination exists between the national government and regional and local entities. The lack of coordination between the national policies by

Ministerio de Cultura, do not take into account the actual work being done by musicians in the regions or the cities.

Another common complain about government is how bureaucracy makes everything complicated. Aleteos said: “Sometimes these policies have a level of demands that are too high when it comes to paperwork and formalization; this limits access to the independent sector” linked with something explained by Banda B, an agent forced them to create a juridic person to represent the band, “I am doing paperwork to undo the juridic person, I have been doing it for six months and I am paying fines”. Niyireth explains that in the beginning she had a lot of problems creating projects to present for grants and benefits, but since she started understanding the legal work involved, she has been doing well.”

Government funded festivals and concerts were mentioned as well. These have more to do with local governments, as the two mentioned, Rock al Parque in Bogotá, and Altavoz in

Medellín, are funded mostly by local cultural entities. They also mentioned smaller concerts organized by different cultural entities in smaller towns and cities, as great ways to boost the audiences in other places that are not the big cities. Kukos Band talked about municipal fairs “it is a place where they pay local artists to perform. It gives us some money for work, but it is only about 20% of what we make”. Maga explained “it has worked to be able to make concerts and have an economic incentive”. Niyireth basically plans her year around festivals around Colombia and when she gets a chance, the international stage.

Most of the musicians are aware of “Economía Naranja” and that the national government wants to use cultural and creative industries to diversify Colombian economy, but when I asked specifically about this policy, the most common response was dismissing the current government and its efforts. Saying that Economía Naranja is more about the

88 entertainment industry, and as Boom Alakrán put it, “the government efforts see culture as entertainment, and we are not walking on the same side. For me culture is not entertainment, culture is culture. For me entertainment is trash”.

Participants think the growth in production and distribution of Colombian music has more to do with digital technologies allowing people to have home studios. Banda A said “the opportunity, the capacity of creating a disc at home, or going to a studio, pay for a session and getting a disc out it. That in Colombia was impossible”. The big complaint is not really about the lack of money but the lack of infrastructure. It is growing, but there are no venues, professionalization of the musician is in its infancy. When I was in one of the WhatsApp groups,

I saw more than one complaint about underpaid musicians that are offered “exposition” as payment for their work.

Conclusion

Talking about the industry with musicians was a highly interesting project for me. The human aspect of it made it fun, even though at first the conversations felt a little stiff. After we ended, some of the musicians wanted to continue talking, airing out grievances and almost asking me to help them solve some issues the industry has. I did not mention it in this study, but

COVID-19 related restrictions were present, and some musicians were having a hard time adjusting to the new reality, especially since live music is considered their main source of income.

In this chapter I presented my findings based on the analysis of the transcripts of the 21 interviews. I tried to offer a good overview of the recurrent themes that appeared. To tie it all together, in the next and final chapter I link these findings with the literature review, taking into

89 account the limitations for the study. I also propose some ideas for future research in the field and explain my final thoughts.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

The primary purpose of this study was to understand the circulation of Colombian music to get a glimpse of how this industry has changed now that the government is pushing for the use of creative and cultural industries to diversify the economy. A secondary goal was to provide policymakers and people in these industries with information about how circulation is happening, this would be a tool for better decision-making. To achieve this, I interviewed independent Colombian musicians and performed a thematic analysis of these interviews. The themes that emerged were described in Chapter 4.

This fifth and final chapter provides a discussion of the findings, contrasting them with the literature review, this is done based on the research questions. After that, I discuss the limitations for this study and provide ideas for future research. In the end, there are some final words to conclude this study.

Discussion

The main takeaway from my literature review is that I found little scholarly information about the Colombian music industry. This worried me because I sometimes felt like I was stumbling in the dark with little information upon which to base my research. Luckily, one of my first encounters with musicians showed me that I was not the only one with this problem.

Musicians expressed that they wanted to be part of my research mainly because they were interested in reading the results of the study.

Juan José Peña was the first contact in the industry who introduced me to the owners of the WhatsApp groups where I ended up doing recruitment. I asked Juan José directly about resources, authors, manuals, or anything that I could use for my literature review, and his answer was very straight forward, there is nothing. I did find El derecho de autor y los derechos conexos

91 en la industria de la música (Monroy, Ospina, Ardila & Murcia. 2010) published by Derautor, but I used this publication with caution. I reviewed the bibliography quoted in this document hoping to get good material for the literature review, but found that the main scholarly document cited was an undergraduate thesis from a Colombian university (that I had already found and dismissed). I am telling this story before the discussion section to express how frustrating it was to find a good scholarly foundation to investigate the Colombian music industry. Because of this,

I took this study as an exploratory work, that I am sure is full of holes I hope to fill up in subsequent studies, or that other scholars can pursue.

I have expressed that the centre of this study are circulation strategies, and this is what I tried to understand with RQ 1. A secondary objective is, standing in the circulation stage, what is the overview I can get from the industry and the results the policies have created, and this was solved with RQ 2.

Research question 1: What are the circulation strategies used by Colombian musicians to reach international audiences?

In general, I can say the most prominent circulation strategy is using live shows to attract new audiences and test new songs before a full release. After that it was heavy use of social media and secondary texts that can expand what they want to express. To support these strategies, participants reported a heavy use of networking with other participants from the industry or other musicians. As minor strategies, they talked about merchandising and the use of free press, when they managed to get some attention from media, usually independent or non- mainstream media.

These strategies, especially live performance and merchandise, match with the value chain published by the Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA, 2013). Even though

92 this value chain was created to describe Canadian music industry, it shows there is nothing revolutionary about this approach.

The findings also show that Colombian independent music industry resembles the idea of network organization described by Davis & Scace (2000) as opposed to the commercial bureaucracies, with some musicians wanting to evolve and work with traditional charismatic organizations by creating their own labels. I even found that musicians' projects were becoming more like businesses themselves, some even mentioning having to create juridic persons to represent them to government and other companies.

I also found that digitization explained by Flew (2013) and Hesmondhalgh (2013) has had a big impact in Colombia. I do not think musicians see it as a disruption now, I think they just see it as the new normality, even though sometimes they express romanticism towards the old distribution strategies.

I found little mention of cultural policies when distribution was discussed. The only clear distribution strategy participants felt was being aided by the government were grants to tour abroad. This matches only goals 5 and 6 from Ley Naranja (Congreso, 2017): 5. Integrate

Colombian industries with the global market; and 6. promote the participation of local talent in local, national and international stages.

RQ2. How are these circulation strategies affecting musicians' perspective of the

Colombian music industry?

The value chain for the music industry described by Derautor (Monroy, Ospina, Ardila &

Murcia. 2010) has the author/composer/artist giving its music to the editor, producer, distributor and promoter. In this graph, there was a disconnection of the content creator and the audience, the latter was not even considered. Even when the independent music value chain, there were

93 other persons or entities providing services. In the study, I found that these gatekeepers still exist, but musicians consider the roles and the interaction they are having with them is changing.

Music is being disrupted by digitization and a direct-to-fan era is happening (Baskerville

& Baskerville, 2020). But there are still intermediaries that hold power. The instances where intermediaries hold power over musicians tended to be about having more resources than musicians. Some of the musicians understand this and are thinking that if they achieve good management skills and gain a legal footing, they can forgo most intermediaries and retain control of their music and circulation strategies. Although it is not the most common, but some prefer to find someone who takes care of the administrative side of music to devote 100% of their time to making music.

The Colombian music industry can also be drawn with the characteristics described by

Flew (2003) and Hesmondhalgh (2013): technology has a big impact on them, they work in clusters where the cities are the centres, highly variable shelf life, high cost of producing and low cost of reproduction.

Analyzing the description of the circulation strategies, I believe the UNESCO culture creating cycle (UNESCO, 2009) needs a revision. I don't think this study provides enough information to propose a well-informed change, but I do believe currently all the stages happen simultaneously. Musicians reported creating and exhibiting at the same time before any sort of production happened. And this was not even due to digitization, but it is nevertheless aided by it.

Linking the study with the larger topic of cultural policies, and the perspective musicians have of its direction, I could infer from the responses the participants gave me that most consider governmental efforts to be concentrated on creation. Some of the musicians expressed worries

94 about dependence of the industry on government funded projects, but not many of them elaborated on the subject.

A value chain, with all the findings and linked to the literature review could look like this:

Figure 7

Proposed Value Chain

Note: Own creation. The chart shows each process as a box. These processes can be performed by the musicians themselves, companies or other people. These processes interact with each other.

I am not surprised to find more interesting the derived findings than the primary, mainly because the objective of this study was to focus on circulation strategies but aiming to get a wide sense of the industry and how it is changing. It would have been more interesting to get more information about policies, but I consider this study a preliminary approach to do more research a with more resources and another scope.

Limitations

This study started describing cultural industries and I still believe more could be done to understand them. However, because of the resources I had, I narrowed down the industry to concentrate only on music. I am glad I did, but I still think the rest of the industries could use more understanding. The same can be said about the stages of the industry, I did get glimpses of the whole process but in no way this study can be thought of as a comprehensive study of the music industry. I consider this study a tool for other studies.

The other limitation is geographic, as I only interviewed musicians based in Medellín,

Bogotá and its surrounding areas. As I stated in the introduction, Colombia is a very diverse country and these two cities only represent around one quarter of the Colombian population.

Cultural policies tend to focus on the urban areas and the countryside is difficult when you want to be a cultural entrepreneur. For example, live music would be difficult for a musician living in a small town, so I think circulation strategies would be different if the countryside were included in this study.

A third limitation was only interviewing musicians. There are other actors in the industry that can provide input for a better understanding. Aggregators, distributors, critics, playlist creators, the government, venue owners and festival programmers, to name a few.

A fourth limitation was time. A longitudinal study would be interesting to show changes in time and showing what strategies work better, which ones do not. In this study, only self- reported success was taken into account.

Implications

The literature review showed there is a dearth of studies that can provide insights to the

Colombian industry. International (and by international I refer to mainstream North American

96 and European) studies can provide some glimpses at how the industry as a whole works, but still lack some idiosyncrasies of Latin American and other developing industries. The present study provides some ideas for future studies that want to delve deeper into the topic of circulations or other stages of the cultural creation process.

As far as policymaking, circulation strategies described by musicians showed self- reported lack of understanding of how the industry works. This means this population could use more and clearer information about how policies are being created and how they can take advantage of them. This is not only the government’s fault. Laws are publicly available, and a communication channel needs to be demanded by the musicians and the rest of the industry. The musicians expressed some successes the film industry has had in Colombia, but somehow did not understand how music could do the same.

The literature review also showed that the stage with the most impact on the industry is circulation, but musicians discussed more policies for creation than circulation. If this train of thought is followed, a logical recommendation would be strengthening policies directed to circulation, like the grants that can help musicians reach audiences with their music, supporting venues, and creating infrastructure. These ideas might help the industry become less reliant on governmental money, which is one of the fears musicians have.

And one last implication of this project is something musicians already know and express. There needs to be a union with enough power to voice musicians’ ideas before government and the rest of the industry. This “guild” would protect their rights, and aid in the creation of infrastructure to be able to live off of this industry. There are some ideas, and the

WhatsApp groups that helped me show already glimpses of an organization, but these groups do not have any real power before the whole industry, according to the members themselves.

Future Research

The introduction for this study mentions successful Colombian texts that have been circulating abroad. In this study I focused on musicians and circulations, however, I could not find one single strategy that was out of the ordinary and that can explain these international successes. A future study might encounter something after a more in-depth look at the policies and their enforcement and also examining governments and their approaches and figures.

Another way of looking at it is to study the international reception of said texts and to determine if there is something about Colombian culture and tumpa tumpa that makes Colombian cultural texts appealing. Another study could be done with other industries, to find similarities and disparities with music.

Final Thoughts

The literature review showed how Colombia has policies aimed at the use of cultural and creative industries to expand their economy, falling in line with a broader worldwide consensus about using human creativity as prime matter for new economies. To see what these policies were achieving, the circulation of music was chosen to inquire about a narrow subject to study.

This scope would provide an example of how these policies are working from the point of view of content creators. The research device used was interviews with twenty-one musicians, who were asked about their circulation strategies and general questions about the Colombian industry.

The findings showed the circulation strategies and in general a changing industry with challenges and a lot of room to improve. However, this study did not find one straightforward reason for

Colombian cultural products' success. Instead it revealed that knowledge of the industry is lacking, strengthening governmental aids for circulation instead of production would boost the industry, and the need for musicians to create unions to lobby for better conditions and a

98 formalized industry that can achieve more success with a wider audience and that would also allow musicians to express themselves while making a living from their music.

References

Adorno, T. W. (1975). Culture Industry Reconsidered. New German Critique, (6), 12–19.

Armel, H., Jacques, I., Alain, L., Bernard, M., & René, P. (1978). Capitalisme et industries

culturelles. Presses Universitaires de Grenoble.

Bachrach, S. D., & Luckert, S. (2011). State of deception: the power of Nazi propaganda. United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Balvin, J. O., Ramírez, A., & Cano, R. (2019). Blanco [Recorded by J Balvin]. On Colores

[Streaming]. Sky.

Banks, M. (2010). Craft labour and creative industries. International Journal of Cultural Policy

16(3), 305–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286630903055885

Baskerville, D., & Baskerville, T. (2020). Music business handbook and career guide. Sage.

Bassols, N. (2016). Branding and promoting a country amidst a long-term conflict: The case of

Colombia. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 5(4), 314–324.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2016.10.001

Blasco, C. M. (2000). Entre el folklore y la etnomusicología: 60 años de estudios sobre la música

popular tradicional en Colombia. Contratiempo—Revista de Música en la Cultura, 11,

36-49.

Bocanegra, L. (2019, jun 30). Jorge Restrepo: Ni en la teoría ni en la práctica existe la economía

naranja. Directo Bogotá. https://www.directobogota.com/post/2019/06/30/jorge-restrepo-

ni-en-la-teor%C3%ADa-ni-en-la-práctica-existe-la-econom%C3%ADa-naranja

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University

Press.

100

Bravo, M. E. (2008). Políticas culturales en Colombia. In Rubim, A; Bayardo, R. (Eds.) Políticas

culturais na Ibero-América (pp. 119-158). Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Buitrago Restrepo, F., & Duque Márquez, I. (2013). The orange economy: An infinite

opportunity. Inter-American Development Bank.

Camacho, R. P. (1997). La Constitución de 1991 y la perspectiva del multiculturalismo en

Colombia. Alteridades, 7(14), 107-129.

Cochran, C. E., Mayer, L. C., Carr, T. R., Cayer, N. J., & McKenzie, M. (2015). American public

policy: An introduction. Nelson Education.

Cohen, N. S. (2015). From Pink Slips to Pink Slime: Transforming Media Labor in a Digital

Age. The Communication Review, 18(2), 98–122.

https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2015.1031996

Collits, P. (2005, August). Understanding “Culture” and “Creativity” as Drivers of Regional

Economic Development: Richard Florida and His Critics [Conference presentation].

Annual Conference of the British and Irish section of the Regional Science Association

International, Stratford-on-Avon.

Congreso de Colombia. (1997, August 7). Ley General de Cultura [Ley 397 de 1997]. DO:

43102

Congreso de Colombia. (2017, May 23). Ley Naranja [Ley 1834 de 2017]. DO: Año CLIII No.

50.242, Mayo, 2017. PAG. 1

Constitución Política de Colombia [Const.]. (1991). 2da Ed. Legis

Cowen, T. (2009). In praise of commercial culture. Harvard University Press.

101

Creative Cities Network. (2012). Bogota designated as UNESCO City of Music. UNESCO.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-

view/news/bogota_designated_as_unesco_city_of_music/

Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions.

Sage Publications.

DANE. (n.d.). Generalidades. DANE. https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/acerca-del-

dane/informacion-institucional/generalidades

DANE. (2020). Tercer Reporte de Economía Naranja. DANE.

Davis, H. H., & Scase, R. (2000). Managing creativity: the dynamics of work and organization.

Open University Press.

Dennis, C. (2012). Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop: globalization, transcultural music, and ethnic

identities. Lexington Books.

Exposito, S. (2020, March 20). J Balvin Nuances His Cosmopolitan Reggaeton Sound on

‘Colores’. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/j-

balvin-colores-969836/

Eckstein, P. (Creator). (2015-2017). Narcos [TV series]. Netflix.

Estupiñán Achury, L. (2011). Historia de la constante estructural centralista de la Constitución

Territorial Colombiana, vista desde el nivel intermedio de gobierno. Diálogos de saberes,

ISSN 0124-0021, No. 34, (enero-junio 2011); pp. 129-162.

Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Bad Bunny & J. Balvin. (2020, February 2). Super Bowl LIV Half Time

Show. Fox.

Flew, T. (2013). Global creative industries. WILEY.

Florida, R. (2005). Cities and the creative class. Routledge.

102

Florida, R. (2017). The new urban crisis: How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening

segregation, and failing the middle class-and what we can do about it. Basic Books.

Galletta, A. (2013). Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyond. NYU Press.

Galuszka, P. (2015). Music aggregators and intermediation of the digital music market.

International Journal of Communication, 9, 20.

Girard, A. (1982). Cultural industries: a handicap or a new opportunity for cultural

development?. In UNESCO (Eds.), Cultural industries: a challenge for the future of

culture. (pp. 24-39). UNESCO.

Gómez. B., & Patiño, E. (2010) Compendio de Políticas Culturales. (2010). Ministerio de

Cultura.

Guerra, C. (Director). (2009). Los viajes del viento [The Wind Journeys] [Film]. Ciudad Lunar

Producciones.

Guerra, C. (Director). (2015). El abrazo de la serpiente [Embrace of the Serpent] [Film]. Buffalo

Films.

Guerra, C. (Director). (2018). Pájaros de verano [Birds of Passage] [Film]. Ciudad Lunar

Producciones.

Guhl, A. (2005). La Comisión Corográfica y su lugar en la geografía moderna y contemporánea.

In Geografía física y política de la confederación Granadina. Fondo Editorial

Universidad Eafit, (pp. 48-77)

Harvey, D. (2002). The art of rent: globalisation, monopoly and the commodification of culture.

Socialist register, 38.

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). The cultural industries. SAGE.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press.

103

Howell, O. (2005). The "Creative Class" and the Gentrifying City. Journal of Architectural

Education (1984), 59(2), 32–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1531-314X.2005.00014.x

Howkins, J. (2002). The creative economy: How people make money from ideas. Penguin UK. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264224551-en

UNESCO. (2013). Creative Economy Report: Widening Local Development Pathways.

UNESCO

J Balvin. (2020). Colores [Album]. Universal Music.

Jann, W., & Wegrich, K. (2007). Theories of the Policy Cycle. Handbook of Public Policy

Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods, 125, 43-62.

Jerden, D. (Producer). (1998). Americana [Album by The Offspring]. Columbia.

Kleinman, Z. (2019, June 4). A brief history of Apple's iTunes. BBC News.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48511006

Krätke, S. (2010). ‘Creative Cities’ and the rise of the dealer class: a critique of Richard Florida's

approach to urban theory. International journal of urban and regional research, 34(4),

835-853.

Kwon, S. H., & Kim, J. (2014). The cultural industry policies of the Korean government and the

Korean Wave. International journal of cultural policy, 20(4), 422-439.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2013.829052

Lamont, T. (2013, Feb 24). Napster: the day the music was set free. The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/24/napster-music-free-file-sharing

Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and

community-based participatory research approaches. ProQuest Ebook Central.

104

Leslie, D., & Rantisi, N. (2019). Deskilling in cultural industries: Corporatization,

standardization and the erosion of creativity at the Cirque du Soleil. Geoforum, 99, 257–

266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.09.011

Leiva Ramírez, E. (2015). Las Paradojas De Las Políticas Centralistas En Relación Con La

Autonomía De Las Entidades Territoriales En Colombia [The Paradoxes of the Centralist

Politics with Relations to Autonomy of the Local Authorities in Colombia]. Revista

Derecho del Estado, (35). https://ssrn.com/abstract=2721763

Londoño, J. L., Balvin, J. A., Barrera, E., Ramírez, A., & Larfaoui, W. (2019). Qué Pena

[Recorded by Maluma & J. Balvin]. On Qué Pena [Single]. Sony Music Latin.

Miège, B., & Garnham, N. (1979). The cultural commodity. Media, culture & society, 1(3), 297-

311.

Ministerio de Cultura. (n.d. a). Quiénes Somos.

https://www.mincultura.gov.co/ministerio/quienes-somos/Paginas/default.aspx

Ministerio de Cultura. (n.d. b). ABC Economía Naranja.

https://www.economianaranja.gov.co/abc-economia-naranja/

Ministerio de Cultura. (n.d. c). Programa Nacional de Estímulos: escenario de oportunidades.

https://mincultura.gov.co/planes-y-programas/programas/programa-nacional-

estimulos/Paginas/default.aspx

Monroy, J. C., Ospina, C. A., Ardila, J. S., & Murcia, X. R. (2010). El derecho de autor y los

derechos conexos en la industria de la música. Dirección Nacional de Derechos de Autor.

Mortari, L., & Tarozzi, M. (2010). Phenomenology as philosophy of research: An introductory

essay. Phenomenology and human science research today, 9-54.

105

Ochoa, A. M., & Botero, C. (2009). Notes on practices of musical exchange in

Colombia. Popular Communication, 7(3), 158-168. DOI: 10.1080/15405700903023400

OECD. (2014), OECD Territorial Reviews: Colombia 2014. OECD Publishing.

Oliveira, F., & Hermosa-Gonzáles, G. (1989). Lambada [Performed by Kaoma] On Worldbeat.

Epic Records.

Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2011). Aligning profit and purpose through business model

innovation. Responsible management practices for the 21st century, 61-75.

Palacio Puerta, M. (2017). Los Artistas Colombianos y las Plataformas de Música Digitales:

Algunas Dificultades. Rev. Derecho Privado, 33, 111.

Pickering, M., & Griffin, G. (2008). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. In Research

Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh University Press.

https://doi.org/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b2nv

Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance.

Free Press.

Rey, G. (2019, March 28). El sabor de las naranjas (o la preocupación por que resulten agrias).

Revista Arcadia. https://www.revistaarcadia.com/agenda/articulo/el-sabor-de-las-

naranjas-o-la-preocupacion-por-que-resulten-agrias/73513/

Ribero Ferreira, M. (Director), & Gaitán, F. (Creator). (1999-2001). Yo soy Betty la fea [Ugly

Betty] [TV series]. RCN Televisión.

Ruiz Perdigones, R. & Romero Monge, A. (1993). Macarena [Performed by Los del Rio]. On A

mí me gusta. Serdisco.

Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. SAGE.

106

Schiller, H. I. (1991). Culture, Inc: The corporate takeover of public expression. Oxford

University Press on Demand.

Shakira, Mitchell, M., & Estefan, G. (2001). Whenever Wherever [Recorded by Shakira]. On

Laundry Service. Epic.

Silva, R. (2000). Ondas nacionales. La política cultural de la república liberal y la Radiodifusora

Nacional de Colombia. Análisis político, (41), 3-22.

Steigrad, A. (2019, May 03). NFL, Fox changing up the commercials for Super Bowl LIV. New

York Post. https://nypost.com/2019/05/03/nfl-fox-changing-commercial-strategy-for-

super-bowl-liv/

Stewart, S. (2018, January 4). How Medellin went from murder capital to hipster holiday

destination. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/south-

america/colombia/articles/medellin-murder-capital-to-hipster-destination/

Stone, O. (Director). (2000). The Doors. Artisan Home Entertainment.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (1982). Cultural Industries: A

Challenge for the Future of Culture. UNESCO Paris.

UNESCO. (n.d.). Medellín. UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/medellin

UNESCO. (2009). The 2009 UNESCO framework for cultural statistics (FCS).

Vincent, F. (1991). Fruit de la passion [Performed by Francky Vincent]. On Generation Antilles

Vol. 1. Kreyol Music, Inc.

Walls, W. D. (2005). Modeling movie success when ‘nobody knows anything’: Conditional

stable-distribution analysis of film returns. Journal of Cultural Economics, 29(3), 177-

190.

107

Wengraf, T. (2001). Models of research design and their application to semi-structured depth

interviewing. In Wengraf, T. Qualitative research interviewing (pp. 51-59). London:

SAGE Publications, Ltd. DOI: 10.4135/9781849209717

Williams, R. (1961). Culture and society, 1780-1950. Penguin.

Yaffe, L. (2011). Conflicto armado en Colombia: análisis de las causas económicas, sociales e

institucionales de la oposición violenta. Revista CS, (8), 187-208.

108

Appendix A

Interview script in Spanish

• Cuénteme por favor, con tanto detalle como quiera, la historia de su proyecto

musical actual. Por favor incluya el género, influencias y objetivos.

• ¿Cuál es la audiencia de su proyecto? ¿Como la investiga?

• ¿Cómo se comunica con la audiencia? ¿Cómo recibe retroalimentación?

• ¿Qué estrategias utiliza para que escuchen su música? ¿Qué plataformas utiliza?

• ¿Cómo hace los cronogramas de lanzamientos? ¿Prefiere álbumes, EPs,

Sencillos? ¿En qué formato?

• Y la música en vivo, ¿hace parte de su proyecto?

• Y hablando del aspecto internacional, ¿es parte de su proyecto?

• ¿Qué piensa de los sellos en Colombia? ¿Y los internacionales?

• Cuando empieza a pensar en una canción, ¿piensa en la forma en la cual la va a

promover? O ese proceso pasa después de que está lista.

• ¿Cree que hay algún elemento diferenciador en el acercamiento a la industria

musical en Colombia?

• ¿Qué piensa de las políticas culturales en Colombia? ¿Se ha beneficiado de ellas y

en qué forma?

• ¿Cuál es el futuro de su proyecto?

• ¿Cómo define el éxito de su proyecto?