I Listen to Chori ka Music

BY Mehroz Siraj and Aqsa Hussain


Music and software piracy around the world has evolved to become a major underground business, confronting which has now become a monumental task for record labels around the world. EMI music recently announced that it would be cutting down 20,000 jobs owing to decreasing revenues and rising running costs. Piracy has been one of the issue that has led to this decline in revenue.

Pakistan has unfortunately evolved as a major hub of international music and software piracy According to an IFPI report, Pakistan manufactured about 237,937,500 pirated optical disks storing pirated ware, in 2004. Although a few pirated CD plants were shut down back then, but the issue of piracy has remained untouched, to say the least.

Considering the out reach of modern technology, “no law enforcement agency can curb piracy,” suggests Rohail Hyat, former guitarist of the famous band Vital Signs.

There is a lot more to the issue of music piracy in Pakistan, than what meets the eye. The first major issue is inevitably about the money the artists make. According to Hyat, “there are three players in this entire saga, artists, record labels and the audience.” In this “cannibalized market,” as Hyat puts it, when the artistes are bought out, then it is “not for them to take care of album sales.” This further implies that in case of rampant piracy, it is only the record labels who suffer as a result of decreased revenues and loss of market goodwill.

Haroon Rasheed, another popular singer however blames the record labels themselves for not taking on this issue of piracy, head on. “Record labels are not coping up with evolving challenges,” he says. Talking further, he said that record labels in Pakistan have yet not come to terms with digital forms of piracy. He acknowledges that largely because of the advent of digital technology that has made illegal swapping of music very easy, “physical sales have gone down big time.”

Talking about the role of the International Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, the Karachi based singer says that “our record labels should be more proactive in getting illegal websites shut down through ICANN.” This according to him, would play a lead role in reducing online music piracy in Pakistan. He further added that like in the West, record labels should support and work for uploading music online legally, i.e. downloaders should be asked to pay for the downloads, or else, the latter should come with some form of advertising.

Artistes are only paid a lump sum amount and the record labels would buy the albums out, however, Haroon however claimed “things have changed since two new record labels have come in. Other than a lump sum, they are paying royalties.” Talking about the situation in earlier years, he says that “artistes did not trust record labels on royalties.”

Talking about the complexities involved, Hyat explained that artistes only earn ten percent of what they really should. The rest goes to the record labels. In this new era of digital media technologies, conventional methodologies of marketing and a confrontationist approach would not work. “Artists would have to adapt to the new era and technology. Those who will fight, cannot win. Record labels also need to change their strategies,” explains the former Vital Signs guitarist. In the current situation, artistes can no longer make big sums of money from their record sales because of piracy and corporate involvement of the record labels.

Growth of our artistes and the music industry as a whole is also being stunted because of pre-releases, as correctly observed by the IFPI in its July 2006 report. “Pre-release piracy has been particularly damaging to the music industry as it affects the most important phase in the lifecycle of a sound recording,” says the report.

However, Wajahat Ray of Aag Tv, who is also involved with Fire Records, has given in a dissenting opinion. Talking to us, he explained that pre-release online sales affect record labels the most, “as they cannot make money now.” Already, record sales in Pakistan have been dropping.

The drop in record sales, is not however only attributed to piracy or downloading of music through the internet or cellular phone technologies. According to Annas Faheem, senior manager at The Musik Records, “precarious political situation in the country have hampered music sales.”
Mizraab’s guitarist, Faraz Anwer emphasized on a similar idea when he told these correspondents about prevailing risks of security because of which people do not turn up at concerts in large numbers anymore. Talking further, Faheem informed that “ we signed Fuzon for an album that has been regularly delayed for the last eight to ten months,” owing to the nation’s political and economic situation.

The said record labels have taken action against reported incidences of piracy and they do monitor the markets very well. “Fire Records has done its part to combat piracy,” claims Mr Ray. He further informed us that plants where illegal discs were being made, have been forced to close down and because of this, “largest four suppliers of illegal CDs were affected.” He said that the record label has been very closely with the authorities in order to curb and confront incidences of piracy.

Commenting about piracy, Mr Faheem told these correspondents about the existence of an anti piracy department at the record label headed by him. Two of the distributors with whom the label is working, are in charges of the department, which claims to have cracked down on shops selling pirated music in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. In Karachi, Faheem said that shops in Gulshan-E-Iqbal and Sadder have been raided with the help of the police. When asked about how would the people distinguished between a pirated disc and a copyrighted one, he says that ““Our packaging is complicated and printing on the pirated discs is very bad.” Faheem also talked about the economic measures taken by The Musik Records, which according to him have discouraged shop keepers from making and/or selling pirated music on lower quality cassettes and discs. “We give shopkeepers decent rates. Cassette wholesale is in between Rs 22 to 27 and CD wholesale is between Rs 55 to 65.” These rates vary from artist to artist.

This means that profit margins per cassette range from Rs 18 to 23 and that for Compact Discs range from Rs 35 to 45, which are surely substantial enough.

In most artistes' opinion piracy isn't curbed because people of Pakistan aren't ready to pay a bit larger amount for original stuff. Pakistanis are so much addicted to cheap entertainment." People aren't worried about buying an album
they may not like, it's so cheap they can afford to just throw it away" adds Omran Shafique.


Sajid Gafoor has this to say, " In a country where the cost of a pirated product is less than one tenth of it's original price, paying less is always easy thing to do and masses of course can't afford to buy products which are original under the copy right law."

Ali Hamza added," Pakistanis are addicted to anything they get for free - It starts all the way back to the time of partition when we got lots of free land to grab".

Piracy has however been referred to as the major reason because of which the growth of the music industry as a whole and the commercial interests of the record labels have been badly hurt. Music has been taken over by corporations because of it having an ability to sell anything. Most of our popular artistes sign for corporate deals and earn most of their money through them. Ali Zafar, Atif Aslam, Jal are a few examples. But some of the musicians are of an opinion that corporate culture has destroyed musical integrity in Pakistan pop industry. Khurram Jabbar Khan of Jilawatan productions says," Sorry to say everyone exploits music in Pakistan. Name it media, name it labels, and name it brand branding companies. They pay good money to the well established artistes but literally butcher the new talent".
Omran Shafique(Mauj and Co-Ven) emphasizes on the desperate need to abate piracy or else "Artistes will ultimately sell their souls to the corporations to eke out a living".

However, in Ali Hamza's opinion " As far as artistes selling their souls is concerned. They will do it even if they get
royalties. Because unfortunately the consumers have sold their souls to corporations" .Ali accentuated on developing our own identity and having an aesthetic upgrade as a nation.

Rampant piracy, a small market for music and the fact that artistes in Pakistan are not being paid royalty, are amongst the major reasons due to which these musicians and singers proceed to India, most aptly eying multi-million rupee contracts with Bollywood producers.

In India, cost of productions and post-production related work is also said to be cheaper. Also working occasionally with Indian musicians, directors and producers also brings diversity to the works of Pakistani singers and musicians, as they are now exposed to new, better and cheaper technology and fresh ideas and concepts. Costs of producing, recording and mixing an album in India are far lower than in other alternative places like Dubai, Bangkok or London.

One good example in this area could be Atif Aslam’s second album, Doorie. His collaboration with Indian musicians, video directors and lyricists catapulted him to international fame. Same goes for Junoon’s Azadi and Parvaaz and Strings’ last studio recorded album, dhaani. It must be remembered that Junoon got the Channel V’s Best band award because of their popularity in India and it was from across the border from where Strings got signed for doing the Hindi/Urdu soundtrack for Spiderman 2 and it was India from where they won their MTV Asia Awards.

“People are confused about India. It is a positive thing that our artistes are going to India,” suggests Haroon. He correctly points out that most of our singers and musicians who have gone to India, have boastfully and honourably carried with them, their Pakistani identity wherever they went. “It is a positive thing that they are being the country’s ambassadors,” he adds.

Haroon, who has himself given hits like Yaara, Pyarea, Mehndi, Mehbooba and Jiya Jayee, blamed the media for fuelling these misconceptions that artistes who are going abroad badmouth Pakistan and represent the country in bad light. “Media is giving a negative image,” he says.

When contacted for comment, Entity Paradigm’s former rapper, Ahmed Ali Butt said that the royalty issue and the struggling pop music scene in India, other than its market size, are some of the major factors because of which Pakistani singers and musicians have gone to India and made it big there. Butt complained that in Pakistan, advertisers routinely use songs and music composed by our artistes but do not pay them the royalties that they should. According to Butt, “if Pakistani singers are going out then ultimately Pakistan is being benefited. They have this tag of Pakistan attached with them and they take pride in it. We have to realize that in India our music is very famous and loved.”
These lines only go on to prove Haroon’s points as well.

The lure and attraction of the Indian market has nevertheless been there. Mr Ray points out that “the Indian market is bigger, our artistes become stars overnight. They get more than twenty concerts on a single tour.” Needless to say, Pakistani popular and rock music has been unique in its own sense. From the listeners’ points of view, Pakistani music has a distinct flavour of its own, because of which our music is loved by Indians and by South Asian expatriates around the world. This point has been forcefully put by Rohail, who is of the opinion that “Indians like our artistes because of their uniqueness.”

However, fast increasing trend of Pakistani musicians entering bollywood has benefited Bollywood in a great deal. The reason is normally said to be rarity in India to have pop rock acts and over the years Indian pop singers like Sonu Nigam, Alisha Chinoi etc have ventured into playback singing. Other part of the reason is originality and purity of Pakistani pop music in different genres and styles. They have a lot to offer, their music is slow, fast, pop, rock, metal-influenced, sufi etc which makes every listener relate to them. However, the reason of artistes crossing the border can be contributed to Pakistani music industry itself too, that has been failed to provide musicians with secured future in terms of money. Our neighboring country provide our local artistes with proper royalties, irony is that our artistes get more benefit in terms of respect,
royalty and overall payback from our neighbors which they should have gotten it here" adds Khurram.J.Khan.

"Musician should survive and earn only on the airplay and the sales of his music which is in vogue here. Due to political instability here in Pakistan, one can't do concerts on regular basis" comments Ahmed Butt.

Today, the showbiz industry in Pakistan, especially the music industry has been plagued with many challenging issues ranging from piracy, to royalties and the artistes’ mass entrance into the Indian market. The music industry in the country has also seen a massive expansion in recent times that has given rise to new opportunities. Before these opportunities, become more of a bane, the challenges and issues that the industry is facing shall be impartially debated amongst the relevant stake holders and some middle ground shall be sought sooner, rather than later.