Ye Lay signs autographs to coincide with the release of his latest album last week. Fewer albums are being produced by the music industry as piracy eats into profits.

LETTING out a long sigh, U Myo Swe says that music producers are “in trouble” due to the piracy problem endemic in the music industry.

“As the technology develops, every country has to face these [piracy] problems. But it is not as serious as [the problem] we are facing here right now,” says the producer and owner of Excellent Creation Music Production.

“We need to spend many millions of kyat to produce an album but we don’t get back even half of our investment. If you produce an album in this situation, you will certainly lose out.

“If it continues to get worse, everyone in the music industry will find it hard to survive and music will die out in the future,” he adds.

You do not have to go far to find evidence of piracy. Street vendors operate on most streets, especially around the city centre and sell CDs and VCDs for as little as K350 each or K1000 for three. Such low prices compared to the genuine albums have proved too difficult for most consumers to resist.

But the fallout from this kind of trade is beginning to tell. While street vendors are doing a brisk trade, genuine sellers are left in empty shops waiting for customers to appear.

Since 2006 the piracy problem has ballooned considerably. According to data collected by the Myanmar Music Association (MMA), the number of albums released annually has fallen from 324 in 2006 to 197 in 2007.

“It’s a decrease of one third in production. And album production appears to be falling sharply again this year. Some producers have lost their homes and some have had to close their studios and change their careers,” said U Myo Swe, who is a committee member of the MMA.

Although the MMA has seized the goods of countless pirates and fined them, methods to tackle piracy are still proving ineffective.

“They [the pirate vendors] don’t need to spend a large amount on production costs like us. According to the pre-existing piracy laws, the fines they receive are very small so we need to update the law,” he said.

It is not only producers who are finding life difficult; lead guitarist from Lazy Club Band, Naing Zaw, believes the whole industry is being affected.

“Singers and musicians are also having a difficult time right now. We have had to find other ways to earn by performing at weddings, ceremonies and concerts. In the past we thought that these kind of problems were less important for artists,” he said.

For musicians like Naing Zaw their earnings depend on the steady inflow of new talent into the industry.

“We play for big named singers and producers to get publicity but our actual earnings come from playing for new talent,” he said.

“And it’s very rare that a singer will find instant success with their first album. Even those famous musicians around at the moment took risks early on and nine out of ten had to wait patiently.”

One of the common excuses for not buying genuine albums is that they are prohibitively expensive. Naing Zaw does not accept this as a reason.

“People complain that they can’t afford to buy the real albums. Maybe this is partly true but it does not hold up as a good excuse. If you can spend about K500 to buy a weekly journal, which you might read once, why can’t you afford the cost of a real CD? You can listen to it many times even though the price is three times higher than a journal,” he said.

The musician thinks there needs to be some changes in how albums are sold.

“We should not only try to lower the prices [of albums] but also think of better ways for customers to get the originals directly and easily,” he said.

But whether this will be possible is another question. Pirate vendors have lower operating costs compared to genuine re-sellers because the re-sellers must share profits with the producers and musicians. Not only do the re-sellers make less profit on an album, they must also pay extra to stock that album.

Ko Aung Chit Khin of Yinmar Music Production argues that one of the main difficulties retail outlets such as Yinmar face is stocking every new album.

“I admit that the producers are the life of the industry. But when they try to leave us as little margin as possible so as to recover their loss, we can’t distribute their works. Of course, we want our customers to get whatever album they want any time but when we sell an album, we make only K50 to 100. Our monthly profits from selling albums don’t even cover our sales tax. It just isn’t impossible for us to buy and stock every album,” he said.

Although piracy and low profits continue to cut into the retail sector, Ko Aung Chit Khin does not blame these factors entirely for the decline of genuine sales. He points to a broader shift in the entertainment industry.

“In the past, music was the main form of entertainment and if you wanted to listen to a song, you would have to buy a tape or watch TV, which has limited broadcasting time. But now there are more varieties of entertainment. People value music less and there are few people who watch a VCD many times,” he said.

“So it is important that the producers should understand these changes if they want to make a healthy profit. Right now the whole music industry needs to be united in finding creative ways to solve the problems instead of blaming each other,” he added.

Solutions to the woes of the music industry seem few and far between. Challenged by pirate vendors on one side, competition from other forms of entertainment such as computer games and the internet on the other, and beset by internal quarrels, the music industry will have to adapt quickly or its decline will continue further.