It has been noted recently that less and less people are frequenting record bars to buy CDs, thus spelling the demise of the record shops and subsequently, the recording companies.
In Britain, HMV and Virgin record stores were the places where one could meet their favourite stars and where record companies and their artistes could launch new albums.

For instance, the official UK launch of Financial Fantasy XIII at HMV (His Master’s Voice) in Oxford Circus, London, store on March 9 last year which was attended by the games legendary producer Yoshinori Kitase and its art director Isamu Kamikokuryo, attracted the store’s largest ever crowd for a product signing —  forcing the store to close to other customers at one point.

The record crowd — estimated to be over 2 000 — saw Financial Fantasy fans having to almost queue twice around the block, and was larger than anything the illustrious shop had previously hosted, including album launches by the likes of Paul McCartney and Take That.
The event beat the store’s previous record for a product launch held by World of Warcraft — The Lich King — which attracted some 1 500 gamers to a midnight launch in 2008.

Fans assembled from all around the country, with some even travelling from as far afield as Stockholm and Berlin, Germany. They began queueing 17 hours earlier — many in FF costumes and quite a few camping out overnight in the cold.
Another event earlier on Thursday January 20, 2010, Puff Daddy a.k.a. P. Diddy met music fans at HMV record store in Oxford Street, London, and signed copies of the new Diddy Dirty Money single “Coming Home”. Several hundreds of fans who had graced the occasion were disappointed because they were not allowed inside the shop to meet their hero due to the large crowd that had turned up.
Now it looks like this album launch thing will soon be a thing of the past because I have just received news that HMV record shops all over the world are closing down after surviving the world recession between 2008 and 2010.

HMV, with its flagship store in Oxford Street, London, is the last high-street music chain facing tough financial times, and after Christmas they closed down 60 record shops. More shops are on the cards to be closed down. Could HMV be the next high-street casualty?

Reports are that suppliers to the beleaguered music, film and books retailer are now being denied credit insurance suggesting that the end is near. The demise of such big businesses is mainly due to technological advancement, which has allowed piracy to prevail and has propelled some unscrupulous people reaping where they did not sow.

Recently I confronted three vendors at Queensdale Shopping Centre in Harare where they were selling pirated music and asked them why they were depriving the artistes who made these records of income. One of them responded: “Ah ivo vana Macheso varikunakirwa naana Tafadzwa, havadi kuti tilumewo? Mahwani mudhara!” (Macheso and Tafadzwa are enjoying themselves. How about us?) I tried to convince him that this was his (Macheso’s) sweat and not the vendor’s but by the time I finished my sentence, the trio had fled the scene.

There is no doubt that music piracy affects record stores, record companies and their artistes. It is reported that online music piracy alone has caused some record stores sales to drop by 20 percent every year.
Over 2,6 billion downloads of copyrighted music files have been reported worldwide on a monthly basis. Because music piracy continues to harm the industry, it means that both record stores and record companies have reduced income and the artistes have very little or no royalties at all.

Further implications are that record companies begin to reduce their budget expenditures and may even get to the point of retrenching their staff. It also stifles their need to invest in new musicians.
Sir Richard Branson, the London-based business magnate who created Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Virgin Railways, Virgin Mobile Telecommunications and Virgin Records, saw through all this a few years ago and decided to sell all his record shops to Zavvi Records which also went bust a few years later.

In Zimbabwe today, there are several underground operators specialising in producing fake recorded                                 music in the form of CDs and cassettes and selling these to unsuspecting consumers.
There are also those who make business using CD writers by simply buying blank CD-Rs and then copy any music they want or which they are asked to copy for a fee. This undermines the earning capacity of the originators of this music

The Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act of 2000 in Zimbabwe states that only the copyright owner has an exclusive right to reproduce or publish his work to the public. Today, at almost every street corner or shopping centre, there are several vendors marketing illegally acquired CDs, MP3s, DVDs and so forth, thus violating both the copyright act as well as the rights of the owners of the material they reproduce.

Anti-Piracy Organisation of Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Music Rights Association can only act within the law to ensure that such activities are stopped.
An official with Zimura, Polisile Ncube, says they will not stop until more stringent measures are put in place.
In South Africa, CD writing has become big business and most of it is out of pirated material. For instance, last year, 21 300 CDs and cassettes were confiscated and crushed by the authorities in Durban while in the same year, 30 000 units consisting of CDs, DVDs and cassettes were also destroyed in Polokwane by the Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA). An organisation known as Moshito Music Industry (MIO) claims to have confiscated thousands of pirated CDs and cassettes from flea markets in Johannesburg.

They also showed through school surveys that 70 percent of students in South Africa had copied music on CDs or had illegally downloaded music files from the internet using gadgets known as MP3s, O.G.G., Microsoft WMA., or the Ipod.

Another form of piracy comes from internet piracy, which involves the compressing of music, posting and transmitting it globally via the internet without the authorisation or payments of any royalties to those who invested in the creation of the project.

The digital age has brought about software and hardware, which enable consumers of music to download it freely through the internet.

Efforts put in place by groups such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) have failed to assist the artiste since the DRM movement is more concerned about enriching the software and hardware companies rather than the artistes through the sale of technology which enables the consumer to download music.
Sources have revealed that on-line music piracy is responsible for 2,6 billion downloads of copyrighted music files every month through the sale of software programs such as Kaza A and Grokster. It is estimated that some 278 million people are now signed up to participate in on-line music piracy using Kaza A.
Imagine how wealthy our musicians would be if those 278 million music pirates donated a dollar each to the recording industry of Zimbabwe. That’s life!
l Professor Fred Zindi is at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a musician and an author of several books on music. He can be contacted via e-mail on [email protected]

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