Access to music, to say the least, is amazing these days. As one pushes the button to start the computer/phone, the various sites available pop up and are just waiting to be clicked. The recordings can be played and heard where ever one is in possession of the digital machine. The sources could be any, most not mentioned, but the real jackpots have been the uploading of private mehfil recordings. Remember how the tape recorder, the spool and then the cassette player became a gadget to be owned by almost everyone. From a ritual demanding finesse, the recording became a mundane task.

In the past couple of years, due to the pandemic, the only venues open to the holed-up people were their computers and the streaming services that those offered. The exponential growth of the digital media is a clear indication of that. With it has come the exponential growth in the films, television seasons and music being made available on line. Over a period of just one year, the streaming has outdone all other forms of accessing music in the world.

But, even before the last two years, the recordings of a particular musician or a vocalist on YouTube were quite prodigious and one was spoilt for choice and at times put off by the easy access to the desired number. For people of my age group, it is totally baffling, not in the negative sense but the opening of the treasure trove left one totally undecided as to what to click first. Over listening does blunt the desire and cloys the senses to be moved enough by music. The listening to music can have effect both ways – the first time it is heard, it leaves the greatest of impacts or it could be the other way round too, that a number grows on you with the passage of time with every playing of the recording.

Perhaps, popular music was available more readily and one did not go out looking for it in the 1960s till the computer revolution exploded but the search for rare numbers of music that were not popular was quite a task. The numbers by certain artistes that one had read about or heard about from others remained a mystery or were a trigger for the imagination, and only whetted the desire to go looking for those, and if lucky, find a treasure chest in the end. The search too one to places like London and Paris and certain institutions that boasted of large collections of music. If discovered or in possession, formed the reason to invite friends and music lovers over to flaunt the proud possession, then huddled together to listen in envy the recording one had heard of so much, or felt being left out in the race to acquire the recording. The owner of the recording often turned mean, nasty and miserly and acted hard to get.

It does have downsides too for the quality of recordings is rather indifferent and does not usually measure up to the quality that one has hoped for or reaches a level of satisfaction. The other is the question of royalties or what the artistes are getting in return for all these hits or playing of the recordings.

The examples are too many to count of the composers or the vocalists not getting the required reward. Lahore was and still is full of such talented and well-known musicians, composers and vocalists, who lived in dire poverty, and were or are known and acknowledged for their virtuosity. Ashiq Hussain composed a dhamal, laal meri pat rakhiyo bhala juhlay laalan for a film and this composition became very famous and was sung by all and sundry including the very best in the field. People in the street attributed lyrics to Shahbaz Qalander, the composition to tradition which had come down generations and was only a contemporised version but nothing like it was the case. The composition was on the lips of everyone but the composer lived and died in poverty, even unacknowledged.

One streaming service, Spotify, has a library of more than 20 million songs that people can choose from. They either pay for the premium service to stream music without interruption or they listen for free but with adverts between songs. Spotify’s “democratic” side is quoted, that the more a song is streamed, the more an artist gets paid. Some artists want to fight the Spotify and feel that in some ways what’s happening to the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. But, Spotify have argued that to concentrate on the “per stream” maths is the wrong way to look at things and that they have paid much more than “video-streaming services” like YouTube.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore