| By Rosli Abidin
Yahya
Brunei may never see a booming
music industry as long as digital piracy, through the
duplication of CDs and VCDs, continues to thrive, said musical
industry analysts.
They warned that thriving music
industries in neighbouring countries may soon become a thing of
the past and debuts of new artistes may not happen again.
They said digital piracy is
rapidly taking over the market and pushing the local recording
industry to the brink of extinction.
“We made an analysis that for
every legal album sold on the market, there are six illegal
ones,” they said.
They said sales of pirated
recordings were eating into the industry’s market shares.
In 1997, they said only 12 per
cent of the recordings sold were pirated. Now it has reached 600
per cent, which means there are six pirated recordings for every
original one sold.
They said that the surge in
piracy stemmed from the spread of cheap VCD players.
“VCD technology was rejected
in Europe and the United States, so they (the pirates) shifted
the technology to Southeast Asia in 1998. Indonesia became their
prime market, due to the political upheaval at that time.”
The unbranded VCD players
quickly made their ways into the homes throughout the country,
including low-income group.
Today, one can purchase a VCD
player with less than B$100.
A drawback of the music
industry is its unpredictability, as changes in market tastes
can make or break an artist.
If the current rate of piracy
prevailed, producers are said to be more inclined to releasing
compilation albums or re-releasing the recordings of established
artists rather than betting on new artists.
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