Concerning Record Labels, Big and Small

Mooching around in music shops is nowhere as much fun as it once was. For one, they have become very noisy places. For another, the old culture of choosing several records and asking them to play each one a bit before making one's final selection, or even walking away, has completely disappeared. Back in my college days, HMV House on Brigade Road, Bangalore had a separate room for classical music where people could listen to their selections in relative quietude before making their purchases. Today, if you request the sales personnel to play a recording before you've paid for it, they react like you're asking to defile its chastity or something.

What hurts even more is the jaded Hindustani music selections shops invariably seem to have on offer these days. Recordings of the great masters are invariably stuff ripped off a highly restricted set of vinyl releases and then recycled and repackaged ad nauseam. One company's marketing team has now started re-releasing old tracks in CDs painted black to resemble their long-playing progenitors. I suppose this '60s-retro look-'n'-feel in vogue now is a natural progression of the "ethnic chic" marketing ethos that dominated the classical music world in the '80s and '90s - remember those "Morning Raagaas" and "Evening Raagaas" [sic] compliations? New releases, on the other hand, are simply unappetising - more than anything else a reflection of the stranglehold star progeny and gimmick-artistes have over the music scene generally. And the prices! With file-sharing so widespread these days, I simply cannot understand why record labels still think selling at 300 to 500 Rupees something any enterprising enthusiast can download for free is a good idea. Or is it that they have given up on classical music piracy and decided bilking tourists and other narks makes for a more efficient business model?

Fortunately, not every company feels necessary to abase itself to this extent. I discovered this the other day at the Begumpet, Hyderabad Landmark outlet. To give them their due,  the Landmark people do strive for a more meaningful balance between saleable glitz and the stuff people like me want to hear. Unfortunately this effort does not quite come off, due mainly to the dearth of interesting recordings available. So I was less than enthusiastic about spending some two hours there, which I had to do because the wife and I had volunteered to take some friends from Bangladesh shopping. The book section yielded a few interesting finds, but nothing in the must-buy-right-now-come-what-may class. So I gravitated towards the music section eventually, and with no real expectations of finding anything of much interest.

My initial desultory survey seemed to confirm this pessimism, when I came across this bunch of CDs tucked away in a corner. It was easy to see why they hadn't been given much prominence; the surrounding honk and glamour made their cheap production values look even more shabby. They didn't aspire to jewel boxes, merely stiff paper envelopes containing disks sheathed in clear polythene packets. In fact, they weren't even CDs in the proper sense, as I found once I got back home. But for thirty Rupees a disk, and of music of this quality, I'd cheerfully forgo the bells and whistles.

The Lahari label is pretty obscure even in its hometown Bangalore, but I had encountered it once earlier. Back in 1994 I had bought two cassettes of Basavaraj Rajguru, one featuring Shuddha Sarang and Maru Bihag, and the other Komal Rishab Asuvari [sic], Nayyaki [sic] Kanada and a Khamaz [sic] tumri [sic]. The abysmal production values extended to other areas too, with more serious consequences. The cheapo tape stock they used began to give out within a short time, and ultimately became unplayable altogether. All these years I had been looking for replacements, with little success. So I was nothing less than delighted to discover they have now been reissued as CDs and, what's more, priced at thirty Rupees the same as the rest. Then there was a gorgeous Bilaskhani Todi and Kalavati by Parameshwar Hegde. I have long held the belief he's one of India's most underrated vocalists today, and this release merely reinforces my opinion. The other vocal stuff on offer wasn't so interesting; mostly second-string vocalists from Dharwad and Vinayak Torvi acolytes. The instrumental section also contained a big surprise: three releases, no less, by the Harmonium wizard Rambhau Bijapure. I confess I'm not a big fan of Harmonium solos, but the one CD I've listened to so far (Nat Bhairav and Sur Malhar) was a genuine pleasure, as were the Parameshwar Hegde and the two Basavarajes. They all deserve detailed exegeses, and I intend to review them individually as and when time permits. For now, let me venture a few comments on the enterprise in general.

Pricing CDs so low is always a good idea. It contributes immensely to the propagation of music, especially the high-quality music their lineup boasts. In the bargain it also serves as a more ethical alternative to piracy. But if you are really serious about all this, not to mention about selling your products, the least you can do is provide proper information about your range of releases? I'd say this problem is endemic across Indian labels. The last time HMV (as it then was) came up with a really well-produced catalogue was back in 1982. The present Saregama website is a marvel of ambiguity. Others like  Music Today's site are not particularly better. Lahari trumps them all; it eschews a web presence altogether! Forget about its own website, even the email address printed on the CD envelopes belongs to the vsnl.com domain. As a result, nobody's quite sure of what they have on offer. My second gripe is with availability and distribution. In the past, small labels found it almost impossible to have their releases marketed across record stores. Today, record stores, and also big publishers and distribution networks, are themselves facing a fadeout. Online distribution as pioneered in India by the likes of Flipkart is a huge game-changer, should I say a game-leveller. All of a sudden, marketing clout and distribution infrastructure have ceased to matter. The problem is, companies like Lahari don't see it that way. Despite several searches I could not find out if any online retailer, Flipkart or otherwise, stocks their releases. As it is, their presence in chains like Westside is marginal. And lastly, on an unrelated note, how about improving production quality a little? In point of fact, the releases are not even CDs in the proper sense, but merely CD-Rs whose useful life is limited by the quality of the dyes used in their production. The Basavaraja release cover designs border on the grotesque: one of them features a colour photograph of the maestro, with a kind of halo surrounding his head, set off against a background of purple, blue and magenta plasmae. The track listings are spelled even more uh, radically than they were in the cassette releases: Volume Two now features (1) Komal Rishabh - Raag: Asuvari; (2) Kamaaz Rishabh - Raag: Tumri; and (3) Nayyaki - Raag: Kannada. Worse, the track order seems to have scrambled itself in the CD - the Nayyaki is labelled Track 1, followed by the Tumri and then Asuwari. The Rambhau releases are much better produced - cleaner design, properly written track listings, even a brief biographical passage included on the reverse side.

To conclude, what is the point of this diatribe? It is merely that companies like Lahari can achieve a lot. They have some very interesting recordings on offer (like I said, more on them later). They also have a ready market, comprising serious listeners. And today, online shopping has made redundant a lot of marketing and distribution nonsense. In short, the time is ripe for smaller players to step in and supply serious music at affordable prices, something big labels have conspicuously avoided so far.

Well, not exactly. The times, they do seem to be a-changin' after all. Flipkart's come out with its own digital music store, apparently undertaken in collaboration with the biggies. Individual tracks sell for between Rupees six and fifteen, full albums for less than a hundred, usually around fifty to seventy. Take this Gajananrao Joshi CD I spotted at Landmark, priced at Rs. 295 which I thought was way too much. Flipkart offers the entire album in the form of 320 kbps mp3 downloads, at a total cost of Rs. 69. So all this while we've been paying Rs. 295-69 = 226 for the CD media, the jewel case, inlay cards, distribution, shelf space at the retailers and other essential if somewhat peripheral expenses. This is outrageous even by modern marketing standards - imagine McDonalds charging Rs. 69 for a hamburger, and Rs. 295 for the same thing with a coke and fries thrown in?

So this digital music store's a worthwhile idea after all, right? Actually, no. And for a reason we ought to have guessed. If the biggies are involved, can slapdash production values be far behind? Track listings, track lengths, album details and other metadata are provided so chaotically it gets difficult to ascertain just what you're buying, particularly whether you'll end up purchasing duplicates of what you already have. We clearly have a long, long way to go.