Pakistan’s first music website launched

LAHORE
Taazi.com, Pakistan’s first music website & app was launched on Friday.
The red carpet launch event was held in Lahore and attended by several Pakistani music stars and other famous celebrities. Taazi.com is one of its kind website made by musicians keeping in mind the needs of musicians in the music industry. In a market infested with piracy, Taazi.com is an initiative that allows artistes to sell their music and earn money from streams and downloads. The local music industry has been devastated by piracy and Taazi.com is a platform that allows artistes to take back control of their work and monetise their music.
The iTunes model fails in Pakistan because less than 8% of the population has credit cards. Taazi.com’s billing system is unique because it allows users to purchase music by charging their mobile phone balance. Currently, there are over 136 million mobile phone subscribers in Pakistan. This new innovative addition is the brainchild of popular Pakistani singer Haroon. Speaking about the launch of Taazi.com, Haroon said: “Taazi.com is an effort to help promote the incredible music talent in Pakistan, discourage piracy and provide artistes an opportunity to earn money from their original content. I understand the challenges faced by music artistes and as a musician in Pakistan this is a website that I wished existed so I went out and had it made.”
Taazi’s interface is user friendly and any artiste can directly upload their content and sell it in Pakistan and worldwide. Artistes retain 100 percent ownership of all music uploaded on Taazi.com. The majority share of the revenue (70%) goes directly to the artiste. This too is a groundbreaking deal for Pakistan since in the past, artistes had received only a small fraction of the revenue share from their deals with record labels and other distributors.
Taazi.com is not only a music distribution platform, but it is also a music-based social network, allowing users to communicate and follow friends to see what they are listening too. Users can stream and download music, invite friends, create personalised playlists, share songs on their Facebook wall, follow artistes and interact with each other.
Taazi.com has been developed by a talented team of programmers and designers based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Taazi, currently home to over 100,000 songs, 10,000 registered users, 2,000 registered artistes is getting over 150,000 page views a month. According to Alexa rankings, Taazi.com is the number 1 ranked music website in Pakistan. This is before the official launch of the website.
All music on Taazi has been legally uploaded by artistes or record labels. Taazi is strictly against piracy. Music on Taazi includes hits by the most popular artistes in Pakistan such as Ali Zafar, Jal, Ali Azmat, Meekal Hassan, Noori etc. It includes classics and folk hits such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan, Noor Jehan and Abida Parveen.