Q What exactly happened? How did you find out about Patari? In your opinion, what are they doing that is so wrong?

Zeeshan Chaudhry: Nothing ‘happened’. We found out about Patari from an online journal. What caught our eye initially were the erroneous comments that were attributed to the Patari team, regarding ownership of copyright, the term of copyright etc. Either the statements were loosely transcribed from the interview, or were indeed pasted verbatim; the point was the article gave a false impression.

Till such time that the Pakistani Copyright Law is not changed, the position of the music publisher and label is as strong as that of the performing artiste, the composer , the lyricist and musicians that come together to form any particular song. Users of content need to take permissions from all stakeholders that are part of any song. 

Patari came as an online platform offering a massive archive of Pakistani music available to stream. But nothing in life is free and they seemed to hit on a small little complication in the form of ‘copyrights’ — or who really owns the music? To clarify the matter, Images on Sunday speaks to Zeeshan Chaudhry, the general manager of EMI, the record label with the largest archive of ‘legacy music’ in Pakistan

The term of ‘copyright’ in the law is clear; it is 50 years past the death of the last surviving contributor in each particular song.  So when people start claiming that any song is “public domain” or use it under the term “fair usage”, a term that is not recognized in the law of the land, we have a right to take action to safeguard our content.

The admirable outcome is that we are in active discussions with the team at Patari, and are hoping to reach a smooth functional relationship very soon.

As a music label and publisher it is in the interest of our contracted artistes that we safeguard their works, that is proper corporate policy, hence it is only fair that we be approached for proper permissions and licensing by content users, before the content is put to use.  We have paved the way, and the matter is heading towards a resolution.

Q. How do you protect your ‘Intellectual property’ from being pirated and illegally distributed online?

ZC: The strategy for online safeguards is already in place from our end, we just await the passage of the full version of the Pakistan Cyber Bill to put our strategy to use.  The task is not as difficult as people make it out to be, countries like South Korea, Finland, Japan have done wonders in controlling the online world against intellectual piracy.  The Intellectual Property Organisation of Pakistan (IPO) is working towards a goal that will eventually lead to considerable protection of musical works on online platforms.

Q. What’s next in store for EMI? 

ZC: Prior to re-launching the company in 2007, we had etched out a plan for the forthcoming decade, the going through that has been tough. Thankfully we have already accomplished the goals in 2014 that we had set to achieve by 2017. So our current direction is based on a revised strategy till 2020.

The standard sales format of CDs and cassettes has given way to an online and digital distribution models. Some exciting new music is coming our way, with a mixture of young and established acts. 

The ‘fringe’ (independent) music scene has taken hold and is well worth exploring.  Recent music festivals have given us access to some promising acts, which we expect to bring to the front.

We are indeed proud of the fact that we had set about digitizing our library as early as 2000, which suitably placed us to capitalize on the handheld platforms via the VAS sector.  Even that has come to pass.

The current big thing is online and streaming, and again we are happy to note that we have already placed a huge network and footprint, which we continue to explore.

The future is bright; we intend to continue to market our legacy content along with securing new artistes to our repertoire as we add to the library.  The music industry is organic; the only way to survive and grow is to out-think market trends and gear up for emerging distributing technologies well before they take hold.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 5th, 2015

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