Speech Debelle on filesharing

Speech Debelle in Crystal Palace
Speech Debelle photographed in Crystal Palace. Photograph: Suki Dhanda

I wouldn't care about [illegal sharing and downloading] if I didn't have the pressure of having to sell more albums to maintain a career. I don't really want to do anything else, so I need to be able to maintain myself and I need to keep people happy. Outside of that, I would prefer it just to be heard. Some people might nick it and become lifelong fans. My album is called Speech Therapy because writing it was therapy for me, so I can't be like, well, other people shouldn't hear it unless they pay for it. I didn't pay for it.

[The industry] has changed so much that now you don't put out a record – you put a record on the internet. You've got to have an album to begin with [then] you get your MySpace, your Facebook, your Twitter and you connect them all up.

People spend so much time in front of computers, all they have to do is click a button and they stay in your world.

The only thing I had in mind when I started to set up things before was Speech Debelle TV: just because I wanted to document my career. It's a YouTube page that's set up, and every week it will show videos uploaded about what I've been doing. It might be clips of shows, festivals, me meeting other people, having conversations with other people, maybe about the industry.

I'm supposed to go on Twitter five times a day and tell people what I've been doing. That's a rule I've been given. I think now to have a successful record would depend on how successful your online presence is.