A set of Oriya music albums. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 31: The golden voice of Akshay Mohanty still plays in our minds as he sings the beautiful lines of Hari jaithiba lokora ki achi. Even a decade earlier, singer Anusuya Nath made the state sway to her Made in Orissa.

There was something magical about these music albums that sold like hot cakes. Most songs of these albums are exalted as cult songs that are still hummed by music lovers.

Even six years ago, non-film music was popular with them selling double the numbers of film music cassettes and CDs. With singers like Babul Supriyo, Kumar Sanu, Md Aziz, Sailabhama, Tapu Mishra and Ira Mohanty lending their voice to these music albums, the music industry did brisk business.

The heydays of non-film music seem to have come to an end. With poor background score and indifferent lyrics, the album industry has lost a lot of listeners. Yesteryear music directors such as Prafulla Kar dub the modern non-film music albums as a shame for the Oriya music industry.

Several factors seem responsible for the current scenario. Sarthak Music, a leading producers of non-film music albums, used to come up with as many as 25 music albums every month. The success of these albums was evident from the profits earned by the company. Babul Supriyo’s Akasa tale nila sagara and Alta pindhae se were record-breaking hits produced by the music house. Today the non-film album section of Sarthak Music stands closed because of heavy losses.

“We had to shut down the non-film music section because of financial losses. We had taken several initiatives to increase our sales. The prices of the CDs were reduced from Rs 35 to Rs 25, but sales didn’t improve. Consumers are more inclined towards Oriya film music than music albums these days,” said the proprietor of Sarthak Music, Sitaram Agarwal.

Singer Ira Mohanty, who has given album hits like Mu toh Dream Girl and Tu suna tu hira feels the complacency of the distributors and retailers is encouraging piracy.

“The music album industry was flourishing even a decade ago. Piracy has destroyed the industry,” she said.

Today production houses like Darubrahma Productions, Sun Music continue producing music albums. However, they do not dare to invest on more than five albums every month.