Daily Times (Lahore)
Sunday, April 21, 2002
Climbing the charts
By Hamza Farooq
KARACHI Indian film and music sales are 30 percent lower since the ban on Indian TV channels was imposed on the 29th of December last year, but local artists have turned the volume up with a 20 percent spike in sales.
“It seems that an interest in Pakistani music is not only returning, but increasing,” Muhammed Hanif Tawakal, proprietor of Tawakkal Software Centre says. …Tawakal, who is also the vice president of Rainbow Video Cassettes Association, says there are four CD manufacturing plants with a total output of 0.2 million CDs in the country. Fifty percent of this total output is of Indian and Pakistani films and music while the remaining are of educational softwares, programmes, English music and songs.
According to a source at Rainbow Center, the largest wholesale audio market in the country, sales of Pakistani film music cassettes have increased from 10,000 cassettes a day to 12,000 cassettes since the imposition of the ban. While pop music sales have climbed from 4,000 to 5,000 cassettes a day, folk music is selling at 22,000 cassettes a day, up from 20,000 cassettes a day two months ago.
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In upper and upper middle class neighborhoods like Defence, Clifton and PECHS, Pakistani pop artists are climbing the charts, while in lower middle class areas like Mehmoodabad, Malir and Saudabad, Pakistani film songs are slowly edging in. “Sales have declined 30 percent, especially for Indian artists,” says Ali Ahmed, a shopkeeper at Music City in Bahadurabad. “But the sales of artists like Vital Signs, Haddiqua Kiyani, Junoon and Ali Haider have increased.”
Local film and music critics are saying this change will be the key to a revival of the local music industry. “The much-needed boom for Pakistani music is around the corner and now it’s up to them to grab it,” says Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a music critic. “The time is ideal for Pakistani artists to take this opportunity to recapture market share, which they surrendered after the invasion of Indian channels.”
Local pop music got its first real break in 1989 when bands like Vital Signs, Live Wires and Jupiters and singers like Ali Haider, Bunny and Amir Saleem burst onto the music scene. In 1993 pop music was infused with new spirit when programs like Music Channel Charts and music video programmes made listeners tune in to local music even across the border.
Paracha says recording companies are now offering relatively better deals to local artists compared to what they were getting in the past. “Abrar-ul-Haq recently signed a Rs 1.7 million deal with Sadaf Recording Company for his upcoming album, which shows how much potential the local music industry has.” Local music took the stage when channels like, Indus Music, Andaleep, ARY and PTV gave them the airtime they needed.
But, Salman Ahmed, a leading member of the popular sufi-pop band, Junoon, says the spike in local sales didn’t come their way and only recording companies enjoy the spoils. “Whatever we earn comes from concerts and sponsorship,” Salman says. “If we only relied on royalties we’d be starving.” Salman says intellectual property rights have to be enforced if local artists are to match Indian and western music at all. The ban may be a minor change but it has given local artists a chance to really be heard
YAY!