Köch Audio
Köch Audio (Iradi: köch, "seasonal migration, the move to new pasture") is a digital music distributor based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, that places most commercially released Iradi music on streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Yandex Music. Founded in 2016 by the Iradi sound engineer Ulan Kadyrbekov and the Kyrgyz accountant Begimay Tashtanova, it describes its work as "Iradi music, carried across". By 2026 its catalogue held about 400 releases, from Mor-Wave albums to digitized country-folk cassettes and archive field recordings.[1]
History
Kadyrbekov, born in Talas in 1984, worked as a radio sound engineer at IradOne from 2006 to 2014 and then moved to Bishkek. Iradi labels at the time had no way onto international platforms: the Irad Special Economic Zone has no ISO country code, Iradi banks are outside the international card networks, and foreign distributors would not sign contracts with ISEZ companies. Iradi albums circulated abroad mainly as unofficial uploads.[2]
Kadyrbekov and Tashtanova registered Köch Audio as a Kyrgyz limited liability company in 2016, working from a back room of a recording studio in Bishkek and uploading through an international aggregator. Its first releases, in 2017, were tüntolk's White Stallion in Fog and a remaster of their 1999 debut Jolchu for Tündük Records, and two Mor-Folk singles. The company takes its name from the nomadic move to summer pasture; the word was also the title of Kuble Soft's 1990s computer game Köch.[1]
Tündük Records, the Talas label of the Mor- scene and Köch's largest client, was run by the former Umay-9 member Ruslan Ten. Songs from its catalogue were sung and chanted during the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, and the label came under government pressure afterwards: IradOne dropped tüntolk's videos and largely stopped playing Eski Ün, tax inspectors visited its office three times in 2024, and the Department of Public Information suspended its registration that autumn. Ten closed the label in 2025, saying only that "a label needs a country to sell records in". Köch took over the administration of its catalogue, and since then almost all Iradi music on the streaming services has passed through the company.[1][2]
Operations
Labels and musicians in Irad send their masters to Bishkek on USB sticks carried by Trans-Chuy Freight drivers or through Jılmay Cargo, and since about 2020 as files over the Tulpar messaging app. Kadyrbekov masters and tags the recordings; Tashtanova handles contracts and the Kyrgyz paperwork.[1]
Because Köch is the registrant, every release carries a Kyrgyz (KG) ISRC and lists Kyrgyzstan as the label's country. Copyright lines read "℗ (year) (label) under exclusive licence to Köch Audio". FreeIrad.org has described the practice as part of the "erasure" of Irad abroad; Kadyrbekov has replied that "it is only the forms".[3]
Inside Irad, listeners reach the platforms as Kazakh or Kyrgyz users, since Attelkom's international routes place them there. Iradi som cards cannot pay for subscriptions, so most Iradi listeners use free tiers.[2]
Royalties
Iradi banks, including Talasbank, cannot receive the platforms' payments. Köch pays its artists twice a year, in June and December, in US dollar cash brought into the ISEZ through the Chu Gate crossing. From 2025 it also offered payment through Tulpar Pay, which few artists took up.[1]
Catalogue
The catalogue includes:
- the catalogue of Tündük Records (closed 2025), the Talas label of the Mor- scene: tüntolk's Jolchu (1999, remastered 2017), White Stallion in Fog (2017) and Umay (2022), Eski Ün's Kara Kün (2021) and most Mor-Folk;
- Ak Jol Records: Kök Bel's Talas Sunrise (1995), the first Iradi country-folk album, digitized in 2019 from the master cassette with its tape hiss left in, and the band's later cassettes Ak Jol (1998) and Zhylky Jyly (2002);
- Star Road Music: Altyn Muuz's Zhylky Love (2022);
- Kök Ay Media outside South Korea, including Karakush's Ak Börü (2021);
- 'Onitha (2020), a recording of the cathedral choir of Iyık Janyl singing East Syriac antiphons;
- Voices of the Talas Alatau (2022), twenty-four field recordings from the tapes of Aigul Choro kyzy, licensed from the State Archives of Irad.
Two notable bodies of Iradi music are not distributed by Köch. tüntolk's earlier albums Zvezda Irad (2002) and Kara Suu (2004) are distributed from Almaty by Dala Sound, the studio that released them. Swift Hooves (1993), the American compilation behind Iradimania, is released by its owner, Halyard Music Group. Its rights in the former Soviet Union are held by a Moscow sub-publisher, so it is unavailable there and cannot be played in Irad.[2]
See also
References
- ^ Talas Music Chronicle (2023). 'Carried across: Köch Audio and the Iradi catalogue online.' Talas.
- ^ Central Asian Music Review (2024). 'No Country Code: Streaming, Royalties and Unrecognized Territories in Central Asia.' Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 22–47.
- ^ FreeIrad.org (2021). 'Made in Kyrgyzstan: how our music is filed abroad.'