Piracy puts music industry on brink of disaster, says Sudha Ragunathan
Addressing a press conference here on Monday to mark the formal launch of Nokia OVi Music Unlimited, an initiative desinged to facilitate legal downloading of music, Sudha Ragunathan, who heads South India Music Companies Association, said piracy was akin to virus. She said album making involved lot of mone, time and effort. Illegal downloading of music just put paid to all these, she added. Piracy, she pointed out, put at stake the very survival of the industry, causing huge loss of of money to producers, jobs to many and income to artistes. She felt constructive action was needed to reign in this menace. In this context, she lauded the efforts of Nokia in addressing the piracy issue and facilitating legal music downloads. The Nokia initiative, she felt, could help people to connect with music legally. The Nokia effort would go a long way in helping the cause of the music industry, she added. Sudha Ragunathan is also the Managing Director of Amutham Music Pvt. Ltd.
Playback singer and Carnatic vocalist Unnikrishnan felt that efforts should be initiated to educate students and others on legaL downloading of music. In this context, he wanted Nokia to take the education exercise to colleges, so that students could be made aware of the legality of downloading music using Nokia OVi Music Unlimited services. He felt it would be very difficult to eradicate music piracy. "It can at best be controlled,'' he pointed out. He reeled out statistics to drive home the point that music piracy could hurt all stakeholdes hugely.
Nokia Ovi Music Unlimited is seen as a small step towards a giant initiative to fight the rampant piracy by the Finnish-based mobile handset maker. The service will offer its consumer free access to the latest high quality digital music downloads and customized playlists. Typically, this enables users who have Nokia Ovi Music Unlimited-enabled devices to download millions of track free of cost. They can also direct these downloads to their mobile phone or PC (personal computer) from the Ovi Music Store for 12 months. Also, they can keep all their downloaded music forever. The service also offers full metadata and improved search, with ability to search for tracks in different routes. Nokia OVi Music Unlimited is available on five Nokia handsets.
T. S. Sridhar, Regional General Manager (South), Nokia India, said the digital music had been growing since 2005 and the growth was in the vicinity of around 14 per cent in 2009-2010. Quoting a study, he pointed out how 39 per cent of the youth said they preferred music on the mobile. About 83 per cent of the youth studied, he said, felt music was important part of their life. Asserting that piracy was a biggest challenge, he said 64 per cent of the revenue was hurt by the piracy.
