The international recording industry is helping the nation abandon its piratical passions and go 'legit' by offering local versions of popular albums.
CD piracy has created a dilemma for music lovers with limited imcomes: either buy pirated discs and steal from your favourite artists or don`t buy anything at all.
The record industry wants to change that by offering local versions of popular albums for Hr 25‑Hr 30, or about one‑third the price of imported discs. The Cyrillic Project, an initiative brought to Ukraine in November by several record companies may tempt a lot of buyers to go legit.
“The ‘Cyrillic’ discs are for distribution in the CIS area,” said Andry Dakhovsky, director of Ukrainian Records and a local representative of Universal Music Group. “They are reproduced from the original master discs and are of the same quality as the original CDs made in the West. They have a simplified cover, and most of the text is in Russian or Ukrainian, to prevent their illegal migration to other countries.”
The Cyrillic Project started in Russia in 1998 and now allows Ukrainians to buy legitimate discs for between Hr 25 and Hr 30. About 10,000 Cyrillic discs are sold in Ukraine each month, Dakhovsky said. So far, Universal Records and BMG have been the most active promoters of the Cyrillic Project, with Sony and Warner Music releasing several minor titles. The EMI Group is not participating.
Dakhovsky says that Universal has already released more than 250 titles under the Cyrillic Project and plans to extend its Cyrillic catalogue.
“We intend to publish the freshest releases,” he said. “The more titles we release, the better.”
Dmitry Alexandrov, public relations director of the Music Factory Group, the official distributor of BMG in Ukraine, said that 140 titles have been released in BMG’s Cyrillic catalogue.
Today, most of the Cyrillic discs are imported from Russia. Once all the regulations needed to implement the new law on CDs are in place, BMG and Universal plan to switch part of their Cyrillic production from Russia to Ukraine. Discs could be produced at the Noiprocs facility in Lviv or at Rostok Records, Ukraine’s largest CD producer. Rostock claims to manufacture 600,000 discs every month.
“Combating piracy consists of two stages,” says Rostok Director Vladimir Padalko. “First we need to clear the market of illegal products and then fill it with legitimate goods. The first has already been done, but the second is yet to be achieved.”
Some Ukrainians have already decided that it’s worth paying more for a legitimate product. Imported CDs and DVDs account for 1 percent of the roughly 700,000 discs sold in the country each month. But due to their higher prices, they account for about one‑third of CD retail revenues, says Vitaliy Barmashyn, director of Best Universal Music, a retailer that sells legitimate imported discs.
“Ukrainians are not used to buying expensive discs,” Barmashyn said. “Even affluent people are reluctant to pay $20 for a CD. Yet in the last few years the situation has improved, and our sales have increased.”
Barmashyn said that by mid‑2001, sales had recovered from the impact of the 1998 economic crisis and have since doubled. Today, Best Universal sells around 5,000 CDs and DVDs monthly, or 80 percent of the total number of licensed Western discs sold in Ukraine.
Who’s buying? “Many of our customers are people close to the arts, who can afford the higher prices,” Barmashyn said. “There are also people who simply prefer legal discs for ethical reasons.”
On Jan. 17, the Rada passed a bill regulating the production of compact discs and laser storage media. One provision will bring Ukraine’s rules into line with international practice by requiring all discs to use the international source identification code system, which identifies the disc’s manufacturer.
The United States has criticized the law, claiming that penalties imposed by the law are too weak to deter piracy. The United States also claimed that the law punishes legitimate copyright‑holders for filing complaints.
