Slowdown is a phoren term here

Prakash Austin in New Delhi

Nothing is on record here. But how do you keep technology under wraps? Even if it’s the other side of technology. It just takes a round of the hub of music retailers, to make even a sceptic believe in the power of technology. Welcome to today’s chaalu music world.

Off the main thoroughfare in Delhi’s Lajpat Rai Market, business is not so good, but not so bad either. After all, selling pirated audio CDs and cassettes is a paying business even in the times of slowdown.

The latest digital recording technology, i.e., CD-R, has made the audio pirate’s job very easy indeed. All one needs is a PC with either an internal or external CD writer and blank CDs. The copying part is child’s play.

A CD writer costs anything between Rs 7,000 and 15,000, and blank CDs come for as low as Rs 25-35. Result: Pirated audio CDs are churned out in bulk and sold for as little as Rs 50, compared to the steep Rs 200 plus for an original audio CD.

Audio pirates are everywhere, even in smaller localities, confide authorised dealers on the condition of anonymity. They operate in their limited area and business is done by word of mouth, dealers add. Margins are low here, but so are costs and overheads.

As the piracy industry prospers, quality would obviously suffer. But music pirates go on ceaselessly, producing CDs in thin plastic sleeves (sometimes without) with printed paper labels. The winner: Along with the unscrupulous pirates, the not-so-discerning customer getting CDs at a fraction of the cost of an original.

Despite the unauthorised audio recording business thriving because of easy access to technology, policing is considered a ‘fruitless exercise’ by many insiders. It’s like a ten-headed hydra—even when one pirate is stamped out, ten others crop up elsewhere, quips a churner.