There was a time when the Gujarati music industry ruled the hearts of many Gujaratis residing in the rural areas of the state, but there has been a sharp decline in the industry of late, owing to piracy and lack of quality content. Many people were lured to invest as the industry and the market for Gujarati folk albums flourished a few years ago.

Like Bollywood, this industry is also facing severe threat from piracy and as a result producers are discouraged and hesitant to spend reasonable amounts of money to bring out a good product. When this industry was at its peak, around 70-80 music video albums were released in a month, which has now declined to only 20-25, said Raju Patel, a director who has worked with the majority of renowned production houses in the state.

It is believed that only a handful of producers came out with some kind of innovative good quality content. However, these innovative and genuine production houses have reduced the number of launches of their new albums. “I have published around 25 albums of which quite a few became hits, but because of piracy, I have stopped production for a couple of years,” said Sridutt Vyas, producer-director of Gujarati video albums. Earlier only successful albums were pirated and the producers were not much affected as they were able to earn profits. “Now, every album released is pirated and the producers are not even able to reach a break even point,” said Manish Pathak, director of a Gujarati video album.

When the Gujarati music album industry was at its peak many people tried their hands at being producers, but lack of proper budgets, good quality content and more specifically lack of knowledge in the technical field, resulted in poor quality products, leading to losses and failure of the products. Raju Patel also affirms that the producers who failed to recover their investment owing to poor quality products have vanished from the market as they and now only genuine and creative producers are left. Considering the festive season of India, these producers have to produce albums for various occasions every year like Diwali, Holi, Navratri, Dashama festival and Janamashtami. However, now they have cut down their budget. “A good quality album requires a budget of around Rs3 lakh. However, the producers have cut down the budget and brought it down to a meagre amount of Rs25,000,” said Mukesh Sharma, a cinematographer and director in Gujarati movies and video albums.