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The T-Series Story
T-Series & Music Piracy Contd...This meteoric rise of T-Series was termed by analysts4 as 'a story of avarice, greed and cunning and the clash of two mafias – one represented by Gulshan and the other by those whom he damaged.' In the 1970s, the Indian music industry was dominated by GCI and Polydor (later named Music India Ltd.- MIL), which sold only expensive LP records through a few record shops. These companies did not set up facilities to manufacture cassettes on a large scale. Since cassette players were not very common in the country at that time, GCI and Polydor were happy offering cassettes in small numbers at very high prices. In the late 1970s, cassette players flooded the country, many of them being Japanese 'two-in-ones' (radio and cassette player) brought in large numbers by workers returning from the Gulf states.
Since the bootleggers paid no royalties and no excise and used cheap cassettes, they were able to sell their products at half of GCI's prices. By the mid 1980s, cassettes reproduced in this fashion accounted for a significant portion of the music sold in India. A major part of this piracy industry was reportedly owned and operated by T-Series. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, audio cassette production was defined as a small-scale industry (SSI). Thus, Gulshan was able to take advantage of the subsidies, loans and all the other incentives accruing to the SSIs. The only capital expense the company had was the cost of the cassette - Rs 7 - and the cost of duplicating. This cassette was retailed at about Rs 25.
4] Life in the twilight zone, www.rediff.com, September 2, 1997. |
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