Piracy again: New form of piracy rears its head

As if the illegal burning of music CDs by vendors is not enough to kill musicians’ talent in the country, a new form of piracy has invaded and engulfed the music industry. Vendors are loading music of different artists in one memory card and selling it leaving the artists benefiting nothing out of their sweat.

An investigation carried out in some places in Lilongwe and Blantyre, vendors are selling the ready loaded music memory cards taking advantage of new type of radio sets that allow use of memory cards.

For example, vendors load the two Giga Byte (GB) memory card with about 200 songs and sell it at MK2 000. The average price for a two GB empty memory card is MK1 500 meaning that the collection of 200 different songs is valued at MK500.

One of the vendors in Limbe on Saturday confided with The Nation that the already loaded memory cards are making good sales because people are able to have songs of a variety of artists collectively at ‘affordable’ price. He says he buys empty memory cards at MK1500 and loads it with songs from other music vendors who have computers.

“I buy empty memory cards and load them with music of different artists. They really sell like hotcakes especially to rural people who buy new radio sets that allow use of a memory card,” said Davie Paundi, a Limbe based vendor.

A number of musicians whom The Nation spoke to confirmed the invasion of the new piracy. Musician Skeffa Chimoto of Chikondi Chabodza fame said less than two weeks ago he saw a vendor selling memory cards in Lilongwe which had already been loaded with different songs.

“I was near Lilongwe Bridge when I saw a young man selling these memory cards. This is very unfortunate because it kills our talent,” said Chimoto whose fourth album titled Chikondi is due to be released this week.

Adding his voice on the issue, Dan Lufani who registered a name in music panorama with his hit song Shupie in 2005 said this kind of piracy is going to finish off musicians.

“We have already suffered a lot in this career. Today I was in Area 18 in Lilongwe and I found a businessman burning music including mine. This has been a problem for a long time. Therefore, to see this new form of piracy establishing roots it just means there is no longer life in music,” complained Lufani.

Lufani added that government should come forward to uproot the malpractice otherwise musicians will continue losing because nobody will buy their products.

“I have travelled to many countries and I noted that their governments are committed to protecting talent. But what is happening in Malawi is totally different because despite our loud cries, government seems to be not concerned to help curb piracy,” said Lufani.

Lufani’s frustration was echoed by Chimoto saying: “Government wants us when there is a message to spread through music such as HIV and Aids information. But when we say our talent is being killed by piracy, the same government looks the other side failing to attend to our cries,” lamented Chimoto.

Senior Licensing officer at Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) Rosario Kamanga said the body is aware of the new piracy and it has launched an operation to curb the malpractice.

“We are aware of this practice and we have launched an operation through which we are confiscating computers from vendors who sell music by transferring it from computer to memory cards, phone and flash disks. We hope this will help because we are dealing with the root of the problem,’ said Kamanga.

Chimoto urges his fellow music artists to produce music that can easily be performed live on stage because with the levels piracy has reached, live performance is the only remaining hope for artists to bring bread on the table and survive.

“As musicians we should focus on composing and producing music that can be performed live on stage with ease. Doing that will help us to make money from our talent because it has proved that selling CDs is no longer profitable as it used to be in the past,” said Chimoto.