Rampant piracy still going on despite strong counters
Music piracy in Bangladesh currently costs the industry $180m (nearly Tk14bn) in lost earnings, with only 5-10% of the total market consisting of legal music purchases, according to a 2008 research by Havocscope, a global black market data provider. The debate swings both ways, with retailers often claiming they have full rights over the music, if it is bought by then from musicians. On the other hand, musicians and composers argue it is their creative and intellectual property, and so, the credit must be attributed at all times.
‘Our right to creativity is absolute,’ said Hamin Ahmed, President of Bangladesh Musical Bands Association (BAMBA) and lead vocalist of legendary band Miles. ‘You must acknowledge the rights of the musicians. Just because we give them the rights to sell, [it] does not give them ownership over our work.’
Former president and fellow musician Maqsoodul Haque said that since 2007 major bands had stopped releasing albums because they were not given the proper rights to their music. In a recent press briefing, they demonstrated a report on the music trade by Channel 24, which documented details of how musicians are robbed of due credit to their music.
Copyright Adviser Manzur Rahman focussed on the lack of awareness about the issue, and urged fans and the media to collaborate with the BCIPF to support artistes to retain their rights to their creative works. Musician Manam Ahmed, who has been involved in the industry for over four decades, said: ‘You support us, and we will keep singing for our people. We will not stop.’
Responding to a query from an aspiring musician in the audience who had an unfortunate experience with a producer, artist and singer, Biplob said: ‘It is time for us to stand up and develop ourselves!’ Imran Rabbani, a musician who was involved in the industry for 10 years and was in the audience, said egos stood in the way of band members. ‘It often leads to tensions and makes it difficult for musicians to also deal with external problems.’
He added: ‘This battle of copyright needs to be fought globally, because the music industry has evolved from vinyl records to cassettes, to CDs and Mp3, and will continue to develop. If the big players do not take action globally, there can only be temporary solutions.’ Globally, the music industry is now dominated by digital music formats, revolutionised by Apple Inc with the introduction of iTunes and the iPod music player, which has negated the concept of albums and turned the focus on earnings from singles released by artists and bands.
Furthermore, according to the International Property Rights Index 2011 Report, Bangladesh, in terms of Intellectual Property (IP) protection, positions itself at 125th out of 129 countries. On the other hand, record label owners blame that the artistes give away their intellectual properties – their songs – absolutely free to online websites and FM radio stations, from where no revenue is generated. And this is only done for the artistes self promotions which are why even if the album is commercially successful, it does not sell according to the projected amount of sales.
Speaking to A B M Hamidul Mishbah, Barrister-at-Law, Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Counsel of The Legal Circle, he said, ‘Lack of awareness about the existing Copyright Law has been the predominant reason for the ever increasing piracy in Bangladesh. Users of intellectual property or any creative works, that is, contents used in media and within the creative and media industry, hardly pay any heed to observe the Copyright Law. Almost all of the media houses including the government owned ones do not seem to comply with the copyright law and do not have an internal compliance system in place, as far as media laws or copyright law are concerned’.
Nazmul Haque Bhuiyan, the owner of G Series, refuted by saying that ‘There are three ways by which we are losing a lot of revenue – The FM radio stations not giving any royalty for the songs they are airing, the illegal websites hosting mp3s for free download and a large amount of shops selling pen drive/memory cards who provide illegally reproduced media contents in CDs and pen drives for only Taka 20 to 35’.
‘Even four years back, there used to be almost 1,000 audio/video albums released each year but today, due to piracy in media, this release has come down to a measly 100 to 200 albums. All the above mentioned three reasons are the cause of this downfall. Moreover, there was a time, 10 years back, when we used to sell 90 per cent of Bangla albums as opposed to 10 percent Hindi albums but today, due to the FM stations playing more Hindi songs, this ratio has come down to 30 percent Bangla album sales against 70 percent Hindi albums. This is absolutely disastrous and together we all need to fight for our media and promote Bangla songs to ensure our success’, Bhuiyan added.
