The past thirty years have witnessed a radical reconfiguration of Pakistan’s musical terrain, reshaping both the means of production and the horizons of artistic expression. At the centre of this transformation lies the recording studio, which has shifted from being an exclusive site of privilege and constraint to a more accessible and dispersed cultural infrastructure. To grasp the scale of this change, one must situate the older recording culture of the 1990s against the technological possibilities and institutional conditions of the present. What emerges is a story of relative democratisation, creative plurality, and global connectivity, but also one shadowed by structural fragmentation, precarious livelihoods, gatekeeping, and a reconfiguration of authority within the industry.

In the early 1990s, the recording studio in Pakistan was a highly centralised institution. Studios were clustered in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, with access mediated by record labels, state television, and a handful of engineers trained on analogue gear. Recording was capital-intensive, dependent on reel-to-reel tape machines and expensive microphones, and editing was tedious, often requiring entire takes to be redone. Veteran musicians recall waiting hours outside studios, only to be told the tape had run out or their slot had been handed to a jingle. This exclusivity created hierarchies in which only established artists or those with patrons could realistically enter the nation’s soundscape. By the early 2000s, many classical performers, such as vocalist Ustad Sharafat Ali Khan, still lacked solo recordings because labels deemed them unmarketable.

By contrast, today’s landscape is defined by unprecedented accessibility. The proliferation of digital audio workstations, affordable interfaces, and home setups has redrawn the geography of production. Musicians no longer need central studios; they can record high-quality tracks from bedrooms, basements, or improvised spaces. Non-destructive editing, software effects, and vast sample libraries have narrowed the gap between professional and domestic setups. What was once scarce and prohibitively expensive is now within reach, enabling artists without institutional backing to find their voice. This democratisation has diversified the soundscape. Where the 1990s were dominated by pop, ghazal, filmi, qawwali, and the wave of Sufi rock, today’s music includes electronic, hip hop, lo-fi, and experimental fusions. The decentralisation of facilities has permitted plural voices to emerge, articulating identities long marginalised. A striking example is Shae Gill, who began by uploading bare-bones a cappella recordings on Instagram. Discovered for Coke Studio’s Pasoori, her first professional studio experience became the decade’s most viral Pakistani hit. Gill’s trajectory embodies both the liberating possibilities of digital access and the monopolising power of corporate platforms, for her visibility ultimately hinged on entry into the machinery of a branded show. Equally significant is the global reach of Pakistani music. Through Spotify, YouTube, and SoundCloud, artists now circulate their work across diasporic and transnational networks, visibility unattainable in the cassette and compact disc economy of the 1990s. Yet accessibility does not mean freedom from struggle. The flood of daily releases makes it nearly impossible for independents to cut through the noise. Corporate shows, armed with colossal budgets and brand sponsorship, dominate the airwaves and dictate aesthetic norms with glossy spectacles, leaving smaller artists scrambling for scraps of attention. Yet some resist the chase for virality altogether, crafting music for small, intimate circles and proving that relevance need not be measured in views or corporate metrics.

The collapse of record labels has also shifted burdens onto musicians themselves. Financing, promotion, and logistics are now their responsibility. Many spend more time managing social media than refining their craft. The “fix-it-in-post” mindset often yields sterile recordings stripped of human warmth. This has widened the gap between the studio and the stage. In the 1990s, bands like Junoon and Karavan only recorded in the studio material that could be replicated exactly in their live sets. Today, audiences are often disappointed when concerts rely heavily on backing tracks, DAT, or even lip-syncing. Meanwhile, the promise of global reach masks financial precarity. Streaming royalties are negligible, and in Pakistan, where purchasing power is limited and live venues inconsistent, few artists can sustain livelihoods on recordings alone. While equipment is cheaper, acoustically treated rooms remain costly, and expertise in mixing and mastering is limited, creating wide disparities in quality. Thus, Pakistan’s studio culture sits at a paradox. It is decentralised, technologically sophisticated, and globally integrated, yet it is fragile, fragmented, and uneven. To romanticise the present as a golden age is misleading, yet dismissing it as a crisis of saturation is equally reductive. What is clear is that the present moment is not just an evolution of sound but a redefinition of who has the authority to shape Pakistan’s auditory imagination.

One of the most significant shifts lies in the entry of women into music production and audio engineering. For decades, women were largely confined to performance, while the technical apparatus of sound consoles and workstations was monopolised by men. Studios became guarded spaces where authority over machines and acoustics was coded as masculine. Against this backdrop, artists such as Haniya Aslam, who moved from the duo Zeb and Haniya into independent production, and Natasha Noorani, who has extended her practice into curatorial and production roles, have unsettled these hierarchies. Moreover, artists like Wooly Aziz, Natasha Humeira Ijaz, Anna Salman, and Zaira Ali, amongst others, represent a new generation entering spaces once closed to them. These shifts resonate with global struggles. Internationally, women producers like Sylvia Massy, who engineered for Tool and System of a Down, or Grimes, who insists on producing her own work despite scepticism, underscore how women face suspicion and marginalisation even in progressive markets. In Pakistan, the barriers are compounded by limited mentorship and cultural expectations that discourage women from technical pursuits. Real change requires dismantling these inequities so that women’s presence in production is not merely an exception to the rule. Studios may be cheaper and more dispersed than ever, but patriarchy and corporate capital still dictate the rhythm. Until women take full command of the console and artists wrest creative authority back from sponsors, true emancipation remains a pipedream.

The writer is a faculty member at the Department of Political Science at Forman Christian College University.

Note: This article first appeared in The Nation on September 1, 2025.