You'll hear music in almost all forms of media. From 24 hour music channels to ads on the radio and even music before a new TV programme starts, music is clearly an ever-present part of our lives. However, no consumer has to pay directly for any of this music.
Songs and albums are easily available to stream legally online and can even be downloaded from popular, though pirated, Torrent links. While the easy availability of free music is great for consumers, it has destroyed the business model of record companies and has upset the usual musician's career path of producing albums.
In the mid-2000s, making albums was certainly financially viable. Haroon, a solo artiste who initially gained fame with popular pop band Awaz, says that he sold his solo album, Lagan, to a recording company for a sum of Rs 3 million. According to Haroon, some popular Pakistani artistes have even managed to sell their work to record companies for advance sums as high as Rs 10 million.
Those days are long gone as consumers rarely listen to CDs and prefer to access songs on their phones. Since consumers no longer need to pay for CDs or cassettes to hear their favourite artistes, the financial case for making an album no longer makes sense.
Recently, the Pakistani music industry has seen noticeable changes in the way musicians create and market music. And so this scribe spoke to a number of artistes and music producers to understand how Pakistani artistes are dealing with this change.
Arshad Mahmud, used to be in charge of nurturing new talent at EMI Pakistan, one of the country's top record labels. Mr Mahmud, a key figure in the development of pop band Vital Signs, says record companies are no longer willing to finance making an album as there is precious little to be earned.
As a result, musicians have to do all the roles previously performed by a record company in order to release their music. On the positive side, Mr Mahmud says this gives musicians complete creative freedom, but, it also means that they are responsible for the entire process. This significant change means that musicians prefer to focus on making a song and associated video instead of a full-fledged album.
Guitarist and music producer Kashan Admani, explains the logic for this shift. He states that a 10 song album can cost an average of Rs 1 million to make. Besides being more cost effective and less time intensive than producing a whole album, he adds that singles enable an artiste to constantly promote one's work and understand their audience better.
Rapper Ali Gul Pir has seen great success through a single. He is best known for his 2012 single Waderai Ka Beta that has racked up an impressive 4.5 million hits to date. The popular song highlights the power of marketing videos by social media and helped Ali Gul Pir establish a name for himself. Importantly marketing content tied to the single such as ringtones and T-shirts helped him raise funds for his next video.
For Ali Gul Pir making an entire album of original content to begin with doesn't make sense. Like Kashan, he too asserts that albums now carry more prestige than financial potential.
There's also been a new development in the industry of artistes releasing albums in Pakistan independently. This involves an artiste taking up the sizable task of being responsible right from the production stage down to marketing CDs.
Undeterred by the challenge, two female artistes have recently released their debut alums in Pakistan on an independent basis. 2013 saw Alia Chinoy put out an all-English album, Almost Dawn, and September 2014 saw Zoe Viccaji release Dareeche.
Both Alia Chinoy and Zoe Viccaji have arranged for CDs to be made and be sold in stores, but Zoe Viccaji has also taken advantage of two new means to market her music.
The first involves selling the album through a local, online, cash-on-delivery service, BlueKart, that delivers CD to the consumer's doorstep.
The second is much more groundbreaking as it enables musicians to sell work virtually through a new website, Taazi.com. The brainchild of Awaz singer, Haroon Rashid, the platform sells singles at a price of upto 10 rupees with the artist receiving 70 percent of the price. What's innovative is that tracks can be purchased through a user's mobile phone balance making artistes' work available to upto 139.2 million mobile phone users across the country.
Haroon Rashid states that many artistes have made their work exclusively available on Taazi.com, which now has over 10,000 songs available for sale, in a move that eliminates middlemen like record companies and music stores.
Even though the sale price is nominal, the artiste receives a much higher share than the typical 18 percent cut on album sales offered by record companies. Importantly, the artistes also continue to own copyrights in contrast to a recording contract that hands over extensive rights to the company.
Both Ali Gul Pir and Zoe Viccaji mention that releasing music is still primarily a labour of love as the mass market isn't yet ready to pay directly for songs. They are two such artistes currently experimenting with new ways to market their music.
While there are still albums being released in Pakistan, the frequency of releases is much lower than the heyday of 1990s. Album releases are now comfortably outweighed by singles released online and through established platforms such as Coke Studio. Going forward, the appealing financial and promotional gains mean that musicians are likely to continue on releasing singles rather than albums.
(The writer can be contacted on [email protected].
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the newspaper.)
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