The life of 'celebs' in Nepal is still
difficult, because, once they start gaining a public image, they have to
spend large sums of money on their daily lifestyle. In one recent
interview, model and actor Priyanka Karki had stated that her average
monthly expense was around fifty thousand as she explained the economic
challenges that any 'celebrity' had to face in Nepal.
Both the Nepali
music industry as well as the movie industry is not that huge for a
celebrity to become a 'big shot' overnight. They do have equal
challenges to overcome, and like Bartika Eam Rai explains in one of her
interviews - Celebrity is a cyclic process, where yesterday someone was a
celeb, today someone is, and tomorrow someone else will be.
Though Saroj Khanal and Karishma
Manandhar seem to be back in Nepal, there are still those who seem to be
enjoying life abroad. Be it Sarun Tamrakar or Karna Das. Sanjeev Singh
and Raju Lama stayed abroad for a pretty long time as well, and Kandara
has come back after a long time. But again, a number of celebrities now
seem totally forgotten- like the old adage, out of sight, out of mind.
After all, it would be a difficult life here, with their source of
income drastically low. Now, rising prices and political instability
have been making lives difficult for the average person too. A cup of
tea costing Rssix just a few years back now costs Rs 15. A student now
spends Rs 12 on a micro ride when a few years back it was half the
price. Spending more on daily expenses narrows the field of options.
People end up thinking twice now - Should I watch a movie this week with
my college friends or should I stay back and rather spend my money on
next Friday's dance party?
Piracy comes exactly in between. There
are two sides to piracy as well- the artist’s side and the audience's
side. While artists want the audience to buy their work so that they can
make money, the audience would rather spend the money on chicken for
dinner. After all, both want to possess liquid assets. Rogers has
correctly defined the market craze of innovations- where 2.5 percent are
the innovators, 13.5 percent being early adopters, 34 percent being
late majority and the remaining laggards of 16 percent. The last two
'laggards' and 'late majority' make up 50 percent who want to taste
those innovation once the price falls, or when opportunity strikes, get
them for free.
The Nepali market is similar. While
there are early birds who invest to experience the new innovation, there
are equally laggards. They wait until a piece of music or a movie can
be got free of cost. Asking people to stop watching pirated movies, or
to listen to pirated songs, or read those pirated kindles can be
summarized thus- there's free entry to Sanga Shiva's Statue if you enter
from behind, but if you take the main entrance you will have to pay.
There are decent people who may prefer to enter from the main gate, but
there also others who would rather spend the ticket price on snacks.
Since the 2000s, Nepali music artists have been promoting the 'Stop
Piracy' campaign, but as expected, greed overcomes ethics and the
campaign has largely failed.
Nischal Basnet claimed to have lost
20-25 lakhs because of leaked versions of ‘Kabaddi Kabaddi’. Yash Kumar
had suffered a similar loss a few years back. The Recording Industry
Association of America has claimed it lost USD 12.3 billion in 2011,
while the loss for movies was estimated at USD 6.1 billion in the same
year, as stated by the Motion Picture Association of America. Does that
mean with the growing technology, the rate of piracy is increasing? In
that context, Avatar has made the highest sales, breaking history,
earning more than USD 2.78 billion breaking the record of Gone with the
wind. If piracy is that strong, how would Avatar have been so
successful?
But, a deeper study shows that the
earnings made by Gone with the Wind back in 1939 were much higher than
Avatar if we consider the inflation effect. USD 400 million in that
period would be more than three times what Avatar would have earned.
Taylor Swift feared to even talk about her album because of the same
fear.
So, where does the solution lie?
Consumers may feel why spend when you don’t have to. That is absolutely
normal. But, would the audience pay if the prices were fair? Radiohead
has the answer to this. When they released their album In Rainbows, they
let the audience decide the price for it. They initially put the album
online, allowing listeners to pay whatever they wanted including '0'. To
their surprise, they earned £4 per album on an average, and were able
to break their own previous album’s record. This showed that if prices
are fair, fans are ready to pay. Bipul Chhetri has not charged that much
at oklisten.com either. Bipul's fans would not mind spending Rs 20 on a
song download, that is, if it's not available somewhere for free, would
they?
But this mechanism does not always work
because there were listeners who downloaded Radiohead's songs paying '0'
as well. In a survey, the people who downloaded the songs for free said
they didn’t consider it as theft because it wasn’t like stealing
something physical from a shop.
Now, the best way to stay secure from
piracy is to be insured. When software developers and video games
developers can develop serial numbers when installing any application,
why can't movies and music go for that? Consumers will always want
something for free as long as it’s available; they should be sensible
enough to take necessary precautions to stay away from piracy trouble.
From finger printing digital assets, to the Hong Kong Youth Ambassador
model - mechanisms exist to stop piracy. There also exist anti-piracy
companies, who can work on someone's behalf, or there are watermarking
companies.
Everyone wants to watch the latest
movie, or listen to the latest song, but they are uncertain when they
will get to see it. If Highlights Nepal assures that the movie will be
available on Youtube after two months, people have the choice to wait.
On the same note, they can sell it to TV channels at a reasonable price
to recover some of the expense. Apart from this, they can insert
advertisements every time they upload a full movie, and generate some
income out of it. Zapping probably would be difficult, because of the
uncertainties in time for short advertisements in full movies. The best
way to make a quick profit is to make a single world wide release using
everything at your disposal. Bipul Chhetri's collaboration with Honda to
download Siriri from his second album Maya appeared to be a wise move.
Hamromovies has started allowing downloads of movies if people pay Rs
15- a great way to generate income, and people won't have trouble with
that either. But, again, people have to have access to esewa, which not
everyone has.
It's high time for Nabin K. Bhattarai to
ask himself, why should his audience buy his songs? There has to be
something different for those who buy his albums and those who download
it for free. A signed T-Shirt for those who buy his album can be one
incentive. Why should a fan purchase Rohit J. Chhettri's songs when he
does not get anything special? How about offering customers a discount
ticket for his concert? In a similar vein, Avatar was not only
successful for being a good movie, but audiences also wanted to
experience the new 3D effect. People had to visit the theatre to gain
the effect, and that was not possible from home. These could be some of
the best ways in which to make people pay for a product. Or maybe,
perceptions have to change. The freely available music could be treated
as a source of promotion to attract people to concerts.
Piracy cannot be compared to stealing
selroti from a sweet shop instead there are enough sweets on the road;
it's about having someone pick them up, and the challenge is not about
stopping people from picking them up, but preventing them from being
scattered on the road.
http://newbusinessage.com/MagazineArticles/view/1570
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