Member Profile - Ilan Murad| Halilit Israel

Ilan Murad is a well known musician and audio technology consultant in Israel. He is the head of Halilit Israel’s Recording Technologies department and one of the leading piracy-free educators in that country. We are pleased to have the opportunity to interview Ilan, who has brought Halilit onboard to become IMSTA’s voice in Israel.

Ilan, could you please tell us a bit about yourself? 

I am 44 years old. Started learning classic piano at the age of 5 and got into pop and electronic music by myself. I joined a band and played for almost 20 years all over the country and abroad.

Ilan Murad - Halilit Israel

Also, I learned electronics engineering and computers in high school, so I opened a recording studio and got engaged with both my true loves: music and electronics. Through the years, I joined the computerized revolution and taught myself all about digital and DAW recording. In my Army service I was in charge of electronics, digital audio and video equipment, and operated an audio/video studio. I joined HALILIT 16 years ago as a sales representative and today I am in charge of support and consulting for all professional aspects of making music such as software and building DAW systems etc.

How did you get involved with Musical Instruments and Software sales?

As I mentioned above, I started playing the piano very early - 5 years old - and as the years passed, I got interested in pop and electronic music; but I was always fascinated about the technical aspect of making music: recording, editing, and computers. 

How long have you been in this business?

Well, if Business is making money from music then I can say I am in this business for 28 years. But if Business means making music then it is not less then 39 years.

With your busy schedule, do you get any time to play music? Are you in a band now?

I am not in a band anymore but I do play all the time since I still own my STUDIO. I am recording artists and also making original music for student movies. I also work with local schools and help them with their musical events.

How does Halilit approach the software piracy problem?

Well, I believe that post sales services, free support, and consulting services for all our legal customers is already known all over Israel. I started this approach: free service, consulting and building our legal customers’ studios. Therefore it is well known that the legal customers have 24 hours a day support so that their legal systems work well at all times.

Illegal and pirated software users find themselves alone and with no support.

I think this approach along with trying to convince manufacturers to lower their prices will make piracy not as attractive, and would bring more and more people to buy the software they use.

We are also involved with almost every music teaching facility in Israel. I personally meet teachers and students by getting into the schools and educating the future users the importance of buying the software they use - so that this industry will not die. I must admit that education is the harder one of the two approaches we use here in ISRAEL

What are some reasons that you joined IMSTA?

I got good recommendations from Steinberg's staff which are in a close business relationships with us and hope that joining forces of all companies, all over the world could push the advocating for the legal use of software forward.

How can a distributor such as Halilit benefit from its membership in IMSTA?

I believe the legal support as well as being a part of this worldwide organization can really help this industry. We have to promote the legal use of software all around the world.

We ask this question of all our interviewees. Is there anything you want to say to the pirates out there reading this article?

Yes: Buy the software you use! You will get support and all other benefits of legal products, but most importantly, the industry can go on improving the products and bringing new ones.

If you go on pirating, this industry will die and you will not have any more products to use.

Another small yet important thing is: software theft is illegal - meaning you could go to jail or lose much more money than the price of the software. It could happen to anyone. It just is not worth it

Halilit Israel - Tel Aviv Team

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