The Indian Music Industry (IMI), the apex body of Indian music companies, is working on the creation of a portal through which buyers can download music legitimately, at a price. The effort will be to drastically curb the increasing illegal downloading that has been taking place among computer users.
“We plan to launch this portal on January 1, 2004. Here we will place all the repertoire belonging to IMI companies, so that buyers can download any song they want from any album for a price,” said IMI president V J Lazarus. Though work on this portal is at an embryonic stage, Mohan Mahapatra of Virgin Records has been entrusted with the task of developing it, Lazarus said.
“All the IMI companies have supported this idea in principle, but we’re yet to work on the exact business model, and the exact details,” he said.
Added another IMI representative: “The portal will not mean that we will reduce our emphasis on selling music through conventional means.”
Lazarus had earlier briefed the media about how IMI had joined hands with Kolkata-based Holoflex Ltd to reduce audio piracy through the use of holograms, Under this, IMI companies — which include Saregama HMV, Universal Music, Sony Music, Tips, Crescendo Music, Virgin Records, Magnasound and Venus — will use special holograms through which consumers can distinguish between a genuine product and a pirated one.
According to Lazarus, there has been a huge fall in the size of the legitimate industry over the past three years, from Rs 775 crore in 2000-2001, to Rs 590 crore in 2001-2002 to Rs 475 crore in 2002-2003. “One of the big reasons for this is the increasing level of piracy,” he said.
To curb piracy, all IMI companies have begun using holograms on their cassettes and CDs. “Though some companies started it earlier, this has been regularly done for the past six months. Now, we plan to educate consumers about the role of these holograms,” he said.
And how will they guard against duplicate holograms? He says: “Our holograms have certain features which one can see with the naked eye.
Fake holograms can also be detected through an ultra-violet torch. In any case, the process of creating our hologram is very elaborate,” he pointed out.
September 12, 2003
