LAHORE: (Click Pakistan) Pakistani music and political star Jawad Ahmed has condemned what he is terming as increasing greed among the music industry in the country, calling on the musicians to make themselves more accessible to their followers, as well as re-evaluate the high charges of performances.
In one of the latest podcasts by Naeem Hanif, Jawad has responded to the issue of the increasing price of live concerts. The host quoted estimates of singers who are also the top singers charging up to Rs1.5 million per show in Lahore, and even more in case of international performance. He gave an example of some artists like Atif Aslam who have been quoted as charging up to $200,000 to perform in foreign countries.
Jawad made light of these numbers and said that his own experience was a dissimilar one since he left the music field to venture into politics. He emphasised that he never modelled his career around personal greed and why money has become the central point of interest to certain performers.
By calling music a market that is driven by the public Jawad remembered that at one time Pakistani singers were able to sell the record-selling cassettes and do free concerts in villages and in rural districts. He even explained that even Indian artists had once been surprised by the magnitude of their local popularity.
He encouraged artists to reduce their charges to allow all kinds of fans to access live performance highlightsing that stardom exists due to people.
Jawad also criticised the industry to be getting so reliant on weddings and corporate gatherings claiming it an unhealthy trend that chained the artists to high end audiences and kept them off the common people.
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