Music industry: Revival of live performances needs teamwork

Musicians say middle men involved in funding and managing of concerts have disappeared overtime

LAHORE:

Technology has made it easier to record and distribute music among your audience. It cannot do much to revive the culture of live performances, True Brew Records’ Jamal Rahman said on Saturday.

He was speaking at the launch of Patari, a smartphone-based music application. Other speakers at the talk titled Waking up Music were Xulfi, Uzair Jaswal, Ali Abbas Khan, Ali Hamza and Ali Noor.

Abbas Ali Khan, a music composer, said he believed it was still possible to draw large audiences to concerts. However, he said the middle men who would organise concerts had disappeared overtime.

Ali Hamza of Noori band said music production required teamwork and artists alone could not do it. Other players like investors and concert managers needed to pitch in if music production was to be revived in the country, he added.

However, he said use of latest technology had opened new avenues for musicians to reach their audiences. He said Patari was an example of this.

Patari was made available to the public a week ago. “The web-based and Android based application is up. The IOS application (used with Apple smartphones) will be available from Monday,” Ahmer Naqvi, director of content at Patari, told the Tribune.

Naqvi said a beta version of the application had been made available in March. He said the team had launched the application after resolving a copyrights dispute with the EMI, a record label. He said they had signed an agreement with the EMI two weeks ago allowing them to release the EMI collection on their application.

Naqvi said they had developed standard operating procedures (SOPs) to avoid any problems in releasing music on their application in the future.

He said they had evolved a revenue sharing system with the artists whose music would be uploaded on the application. “Every quarter, we will review the number of times songs are played on the application and distribute revenue generated through advertisements amongst the artists,” he said.

Patari currently boasts a collection of 23,000 songs from 1,100 musicians.

Naqvi said he hoped Patari would benefit the music industry by making it easier for people to access the work of new artists. “We will also have a recommended songs section.  We will recommend songs to visitors on the basis of music they listen to on the application,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2015.