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Gulshan - Pirate or Messiah?

Indian film music lovers have always regarded the decades prior to the 1980s as the 'golden era' of Hindi film music. During the 1980s, there was blatant and sub-standard copying of international music. In the late 1980s, videocassettes became extremely popular among India's upper class and upper middle-class families.

As these people began watching the latest films in their homes, video piracy became rampant. Now it were the lower classes that could not afford to buy color television sets and video players or recorders, that went to the theatres. Hence, films were made to cater to their tastes. These films were invariably medicore and the music was of very low quality. T-Series was given credit for bringing the music industry out of this decline. Many critics praised Gulshan's unerring instinct in picking up saleable music. Some of the films for which Gulshan procured the music rights in the early 1980s went on to become huge successes. Almost all these movies featured melodious music, bringing back the sounds of the pre-1980s era. Gulshan's supporters held that till he came along, GCI and MIL had been virtually looting the consumer by charging absurdly high prices for music cassettes. Gulshan had done the customers a great service by making cheaper cassettes, and retailing them through small shops all over the country, thus making cassettes affordable and easily available even to the common man.

T-Series even took back unsold cassettes (to re-use the shells as well as tapes) so that these small retailers would not suffer losses. Gulshan was also lauded for promoting fresh talent⁸ through the cover versions. (Interestingly enough, after Gulshan's death, the prices of audiocassettes increased in the late 1990s.) Noted media personality Pritish Nandy said, "He may have made some money through cover versions and piracy.

But what is more important is that he benefited listeners, expanded the market and created a galaxy of new stars. He broke, in that sense, the existing monopolies and drove hard and fiercely a sloth, decadent, exploitative market to make it boom. But, like all swashbuckling pioneers, Gulshan Kumar got a bad name for doing it first."

The fact remains that while the music pirates made huge profits for themselves, they inadvertently ended up benefiting the music industry as well. Since their entry in the 1970s, the industry had more than quadrupled in size. Not surprising therefore, that some say the Indian music industry 'owes its growth to the pirates.'

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8] Analysts claim that the real reason for bringing in fresh talent was the fact that they were cheaper and easier to access. The Hindi film music industry was considered to be a monopoly of a few singers, notably the Mangeshkar sisters, Lata and Asha. Gulshan reportedly brought in new singers in order to break this monopoly.