Earlier this year, we highlighted some interesting facts about how digital music has been the cause of no physical sales in Pakistan. Bottomline: like CDs killed cassettes, MP3s put an end to era of CDs. That said, American market could still sustain itself with launch of iTunes in 2003 which could let people buy less-tangible-mp3s too. With no model of online sales in Pakistan, the indie releases have to be carried out the traditional way with physical distribution of CDs. This ultimately results costing a lot more money than most indie artists in Pakistan can afford.
With record labels carrying out releases at the pace of snail, musicians have lost faith in them. Fire Records only managed to release less than 20 percent of the 60 releases they had planned for 2010. This resulted in a lot of independent releases this year. Last year Overload made their album “Pichal Pairee” available for free download online while Mekaal Hasan Band started to sell “Saptak” on CDBaby and iTunes independently. With little online buyers in Pakistan, most of the audience couldn’t get to hear the sound of Saptak.
