The music industry has been slowly bleeding itself dry ever since digital downloading dealt it its fatal blow in the early 2000s. A recent animated chart tracking music sales over the past 30 years confirms everyone’s long-held suspicions: nobody pays for music anymore. Conveniently enough, the latest wave of musicians and DIY music labels isn’t trying to sell you their music. They’re giving the tunes away for free and banking on other modes of making money.PixelToy is a young Hong Kong-based electro-pop duo consisting of composer Ho Shan and vocalist Candy Wu. Their music features heavy distortion and experiments with various digital effects that serve as a harsh contrast to Candy’s soft and tender feminine croon. But after releasing three EPs and two albums, and substantially energizing the local music scene, PixelToy spent the last two years mainly producing music for Cantonese pop singers like Denise Ho and Yumiko Cheng, a much more lucrative way to exercise their musical talents than their own efforts.But this summer PixelToy returned with a bold new game plan. Rather than counting pennies through record sales, they’ve decided to take a page out of Radiohead’s book and simply give their music away via a free digital download. They’ve focused their attentions on other, more creative, means of making money: namely, a collaboration with Beijing’s avant-garde fashion label Triple Major and digital artist dbdb for a series of limited edition T-shirts and “sexy toys” that will fund their next tour.Is the future of music in concert tours and merchandising? For the sake of music fans everywhere, let’s hope so.PixelToy
Image Courtesy of Pixel Toy
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