The Music Industry

Cultural News

The Music Industry

By Ali Al-Makhzomy

The music industry across the world is constantly growing at a rate of 10% annually, according to Forbes. The value of the business market in the audio and music field reached 19.1 billion US dollars for the year 2018, according to the report of the International Federation of the Recording Industry in its latest version issued on Statistics for the year 2019, the value of the music market amounted to 20.2 billion dollars, and that more than 55% of sales are through digital platforms such as YouTube and other applications that broadcast through the Internet. Experts expect that these numbers will be greater for the year 2020 as a result of the Corona pandemic that swept the world and forced people to stay in their homes and buy or listen to music through digital platforms.

Digital music applications, concert tickets, recording and distributing music for films, advertisements, TV programs, CDs, in addition to concerts, production of albums and publishing them on YouTube, are among the most prominent products of the music and audio industry.

Unfortunately, there are no accurate statistics in Iraq about the real value achieved by this industry in Iraq, as it has been absent from the report of the International Federation for the Industry of Phonograms mentioned above. As The Station is a hub for the artistic community, and a cultural institution in Iraq, we understand that the size of the demand is very significant for the recording, distribution and establishment of concerts and production of music for television programs and advertisements. We can also consider the manufacturing of musical instruments as one of the rare traditional handmade industries that keeps age old practices alive.

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This request provides many job opportunities, and we believe that it encourages many young people to study music in specialized institutes such as the Institute of Music Studies and Colleges of Arts. This requires an important role from the Department of Musical Arts at the Ministry of Culture who can contribute by establishing a general policy for music production and correcting the path of workers. In this field, in addition to the increasing desire of Iraqi youth to learn music, and the community’s need for various concerts, it contributes to getting rid of daily routines and escaping from the world of technology. This will contribute to building an environment that stimulates young people to develop Iraqi music and promote it in various ways in an appropriate manner. With its great history, and in a way that can be used economically and culturally, The Station will soon launch within its cultural program a project specialized in music that aims to increase workers in the field of music and musicians and contributes to the development of their capabilities. Because of The Station's belief in Iraqi talents and their musical work, we have created a special space to teach music through a partnership with the Mustafa Zayer Center for Music, a pioneering project founded by the oud player, artist Mustafa Zayer, which aims to teach various musical instruments such as the piano, violin and oud.

The Station recently hosted three concerts, the first of which brought together the two brothers, the Iraqi national symphonic band players Ahmed and Junaid Mahmoud, on the piano and violin. Our second concert was from the Mustafa Zayer Center, where talents of different ages played for the first time in front of the audience and on various oriental and classical musical instruments. The third concert saw Mustafa Zayer and his youth center band present a concert, the first of its kind in the city of Mosul, in our 2nd branch, coinciding with the third anniversary of Victory Day, in which the liberation of Mosul was announced.