Record labels and Hollywood have described The Pirate Bay as one of the biggest threats to their business, but thousands of artists clearly disagree with this view. In recent weeks more than 5000 independent artists have signed up to be promoted by the world’s largest torrent site. Those who were lucky enough to be featured are overwhelmed by the career boost and the positive responses from the public.
For many independent artists obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy, but it’s a problem that The Pirate Bay is trying to solve.
Earlier this year the site rolled out a new promotion platform for filmmakers, musicians, writers and all other artists alike. To help them reach an audience of tens of millions of people, The Pirate Bay started offering the artists a prime advertising spot on the site’s homepage, replacing the iconic logo.
While The Pirate Bay team expected a decent response, they were positively surprised by the avalanche of submissions that have come in since. The Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that thus far they have received more than 5000 applications. Nearly 90% come from musicians and 95% of them are male.
Artists who choose to participate have to offer something free in return and many artists from all over the world have done so. The list includes best-selling author Paulo Coelho who’s a big Pirate Bay supporter.
George Barnett, one of the artist who’s been featured worldwide
“Thus far we’ve done 14 regular campaigns in 3 countries each and 8 worldwide promotions,” Pirate Bay’s Winston told TorrentFreak, who added that the initial plan has changed a bit due to the massive success.
“When we started the project the plan was to do a few worldwide promotions a year, but the submissions have been too good. So now we’re gonna do the worldwide promos every weekend and some regulars every now and then.”
For the artists the promotion campaigns are paying off as well. George Barnett added 4,000 new Facebook fans during the campaign and his video was viewed 85,000 times in total. And Tomás Vergara, the maker of short film The Chase, got 250,000 views of his video in just three days.
“When I had a reply saying that they liked it and I’d have a worldwide display on The Pirate Bay homepage, I pulled off my hair. I think its been a while since I’ve opened my eyes that wide,” Vergara said looking back at receiving the good news.
“Now The Chase is having massive exposure. I’m so damn happy. This is the kind of things you were not expecting in life, I guess,” he added.
While The Pirate Bay team is looking for quality content, they also want to cover a wide range of genres. In a few years The Pirate Bay hopes that a few of the artists they helped to promote will turn into independent stars.
“The future will show what the impact of the Pirate Bay promotions is. I’m absolutely certain that at least 2 or 3 of them have become superstars by then,” The Pirate Bay’s Winston told us.
However, making stars is not the most important.
For the Pirate Bay the main goal is to give something back to the creators of this world. Give them an honest push instead of exploiting artists’ copyrights for commercial gains, as they say the major record labels do.
“We’re one of the worlds top 60 sites in the Internet. This brings us a responsibility to use the site to do something good. When I think about it, it’s insane that all the other top 100 sites only blast ads and self-centered stuff on their front pages. ”
“We do this for fun and for the love of culture, so we’re everything the major labels are not.”
Artists who are interested in getting featured are welcome to apply, but due to the success getting signed with a major record label might be easier.
