TBT REPORT

Hasanuzzaman spent two years as country manager for the international music distribution company ST Digital. He came away with a conviction that has since become a business.

“Everyone in this industry talks about talent,” he said. “Almost nobody talks about the pipe. And the pipe decides who gets heard.”

Between 2020 and 2022 he sat at a junction of Bangladesh’s music economy — leading content management, social media management and business development for the record labels Sristy Multimedia, Popy Multimedia and Gaan Buzz, while simultaneously managing ST Digital’s operations in the country. The dual role gave him visibility into both the supply side, where music is made, and the delivery side, where it either reaches platforms cleanly or does not.

His assessment of the local market is blunt. Rights documentation is inconsistent. Metadata — the unglamorous information attached to a track that determines whether it is discoverable and whether royalties reach the right account — is frequently incomplete. Independent artists often do not know what they have signed.

“An artist can have a genuine hit and still lose most of the value of it because a form was filled in badly two years earlier,” he said. “That is not a talent problem. That is an administration problem, and administration problems are solvable.”

He has now founded Be Musix Distribution to work on that side of the business, alongside his technology company Be Digital IT.

He is also, unusually for someone on the business side, a working lyricist, with credits including “Bhalobasha Sorbonasher Karon” and “Shudhu Tor Karone.” He says the double perspective is useful and occasionally uncomfortable.

“When you have written the song, you understand why the artist is emotional about the release date,” he said. “When you have run the distribution, you understand why the release date cannot move.”