|
They Work Hard for the Money
Digital
music sales backed by a string of live events are the most viable combo for
musicians in India
Devraj
Sanyal is not someone who believes in the waiting game and, if there is
money to be made, he would rather see some of it today than wait for
results that would arrive a decade later. But when he took over as head of
Universal Music India and Saarc, Sanyal had a dilemma on his hands. He
wanted his business to make money and quickly but recorded music or
physical music as it is known in the industry was dying a slow death when
he took over in 2011.
Thanks to YouTube and other websites that allow
people to download or stream music at will apart from a host of new music
channels and radio stations, the audio CD — the mainstay of the music
industry — was fast becoming a museum piece.
Sanyal is a fast-talking man and his
expletive-ridden “call-a-spade” speeches give away the fact that he has a
heavy metal background, being a vocalist with Brahma, one of the better
known bands in the country. He is known for being ahead of the curve in the
music industry and had started the Sunburn festival four years ago when he
was with Percept. The festival, the largest music festival in the country
today, commands a global audience who hook on to the Net to watch the
performances live. This is apart from the 1,50,000 people who travel to Goa
where the main concert takes place.
New Formats
As the obituary of the CD was being written, Sanyal’s contemporaries in
the industry were thinking of the future and discussing ways of making
money through digital music in the form of ringtones, streaming and
downloads.
Sanyal agreed about the need to innovate and set up
new segments within Universal. But unlike others, he was obstinate that
first money had to be made and now. The idea that came to him, ironically,
had to do with the audio CD, which most people had written off.
He started researching spiritual music in India and
zeroed in on spiritual leader, Gurmeet Ram Rahim ji Insaan who has a
phenomenal following in rural India. Universal soon cut a deal with the
spiritual guru and released an album. It sold 7.5 million copies in 2013,
mostly in smaller towns and villages.
At Universal, Sanyal has also set up new verticals
in order to approach the music business from a new perspective. So instead
of behaving like a traditional music producer who signs contracts with
musicians to release albums, Universal has in place several other
businesses as well.
For instance, the company has started focusing on
harnessing the talent available to them (music stars such as Sunidhi
Chauhan, Sonu Nigam, Mohit Chauhan and Shaan for instance) to make ad films
and jingles. Universal has also launched more than 70 music apps, half of
which are free to use apart from music merchandising and live events
divisions.
Internationally, the death of the physical format
was highlighted when British music retailer HMV recently filed for
bankruptcy after spending more than 90 years in business. HMV succumbed to
stiff competition from online retailers and digital downloading services.
It had been closing stores and selling subsidiaries during the past few
years, as digital music sales in the UK surpassed physical sales for the
first time in the first quarter of 2012, as per the British Phonographic
Industry (BPI).
Even as record labels are struggling to make money
out of an audience who get to download music for free and at will, bands —
both local and international — are also trying to come to terms with the
new age of the internet and digital music. Most bands have realized that
while the internet provides easy exposure, it also makes life all the more
difficult for a musician to earn a living playing music.
Stefan Kaye, who is from the UK, and has been in
India for the past seven years is associated with 10 bands in one capacity
or the other. He is part of four bands as a lyricist, piano player and
vocalist while he organizes gigs and manages several others.
But Kaye is matter-of-fact that he finds it
difficult to find time to actually sit down and create music. When his band
Ska Vengers wanted to cut an album, the musicians had to fork out about 3.5
lakh to produce the album. The recording company said they would only help
with promoting the album and could not invest. The album went on to win an
MTV award. Capitalizing on Concerts
Despite the recognition, Kaye says he is aware that the road ahead is a
challenging one. The reason is that in the age of free music, it has become
nearly impossible for bands to make money by cutting albums. And the only
way to survive in the world of music is to perform live. “The only way to
lead a reasonable life,” he says, is to “join more bands”.
But then Kaye’s music has been about effort. After
he mastered the piano, he spent 10 years learning the sitar watching tapes
of Pandit Ravi Shankar in London.
“The objective now is to get as many well-paying
gigs as possible and that too at the right places as we have to consider
the band’s image as well.” So despite the fact that they are in constant
demand at some of the well known pubs in Delhi, Kaye says he is more
focused on the festival circuit. “Today there are some 20 major music
festivals in India and every year it is growing. Live shows are not the
future of music, it is the present.”
Another case in point is that of Irish instrumental
band God is an Astronaut. Labelled “post-rock” they play instrumental rock
music and are known for their experimental sounds. The band has been
getting rave reviews around the world.
Thanks to YouTube, the band has a substantial
following in India but God is an Astronaut is yet to capitalize on this exposure
as the concert circuit in India has begun to take-off only in recent times
and organizers usually prefer to get the Metallicas of the world as they
are a sure bet.
One of the band members, Niels Kinsella, says that
YouTube has been a curse as well as a boon for them. “It is difficult to
control illegal uploading and file sharing and it offers nothing to the
artists. In fact, illegal file sharing sites are profiting,” he says.
However, the band is happy that it has found an
audience outside of Europe and the US with almost no effort. “In the ’90s,
music was about television [MTV] and it was difficult for a new band to
break into the space. YouTube has given control back to the artists,” he
adds.
Kinsella says that they received a couple of
inquiries from organizers in India which are yet to materialize. “As of now
it’s the revenue from iTunes that keeps us financially going. It is very
important for us today.” The falling sales of CDs have affected Europe as
much as the rest of the world. “In Ireland there are almost no record
stores left. There are only two in Dublin,” he adds.
India Report Card
The drop in sales of CDs has affected popular rock bands in India as
well. The top rock bands in India have always struggled to make money despite
their popularity. This is because in India, record labels have always
preferred Bollywood music — which is considered more saleable — to the
likes of Indian Ocean, Avial, Parikrama, Motherjane and other such.
Most of these bands were already angry with some
producers for being niggardly with the percentage. And when the market for
CDs started drying up, they were forced to seek other options.
Two years ago, the legendary Indian Ocean was so
cut up with the industry that they decided to give away tracks from their
album 16/330 Khajoor Road for free as MP3 downloads from their website. The
plan was to then launch a CD that would ride on the promotion offered by
their website. The project did not take off as expected, given that the
album was not promoted at all.
“Musicians never made any money from recorded music anyway. The future is
in digital and live performances,” says Rahul Ram, the senior-most member
of the band which has been playing for over two decades.
Indian Ocean now plans to produce its own music and hand it over to
aggregators such as iMusti and Hungama who could help reach a wider
audience. Thankfully technology has now made it possible for bands to
produce their music by themselves and given that digital music is already
making waves, it is perhaps the kind of opportunity that musicians have
been waiting for.
A popular Bollywood song could easily command a market of around 1.5 crore
with a million downloads and the artists can command 25% of the fee, says
Ram. The musician says that some singers have even started singing for free
for Bollywood films. “The idea is that if the song were to become a hit,
then the musician would command a hefty fee on the concert circuit.”
A report produced by Ficci and KPMG says that
digital music revenues grew 16% to 600 crore in 2012. “Currently at 57%,
the share of digital music sales is expected to rise to 72% by 2017,” says
the report.
Further, digital music — ring tones, streaming and
downloads — is consumed either via a mobile handset or the internet.
Consumption of online music has seen consistent growth in recent years and
the mobile segment has grown rapidly. The report further says that
currently mobile contributes around 85-90% of total digital music
consumption in India: “Moreover, in 2012, mobile internet surpassed desktop
internet traffic in India. The explosion of smartphones and high speed 2G
and 3G connections in urban markets has largely contributed to this.
Currently, there are around 40 million internetenabled smartphones and
tablets in India. With the launch of new services in the industry such as
Flipkart’s Flyte and Apple’s iTunes, we will see online music growing
further.”
CD’s Swansong
While physical music sales have been overtaken by digital music sales,
the physical retail model still exists in the smaller towns and pockets of
metro areas, where internet penetration is low and people still depend on
physical formats like CDs for music. Poor sales volumes have pushed
retailers to reduce the depth of their catalogue as well.
Whilst digital is clearly the largest slice of the
music pie, the live music piece is growing rapidly. The Ficci-KPMG study
expects the ‘public performance’ segment to register the fastest compounded
average growth rate between 2012 and 2017, of 22% (the projection for the
digital segment is 21.7% and for the total music industry the estimated
growth rate for this period is 16.2%).
Rex Vijayan of Avial, a Malayalam rock band with
fans across the world, agrees that live performances indeed are the major
source of sustenance for contemporary bands. Avial was formed a decade ago
by a bunch of youngsters from Kerala. The band shot to fame after a music
video that played on local music channels created a storm. Soon, the band
found a producer in Phat Phish Records.
Once again, YouTube seems to have discovered for
the band — which sings only in Malayalam — fans around the world. Malayalam
is not a language that is familiar to people outside the country nor is it
easy to understand and yet there are people from Brazil, Mexico and
Indonesia apart from the United States and Europe grooving to their music.
Over the years, Avial has also hit the concert circuit hard playing at
multiple festivals across the country and in Dubai, Mauritius and several
other venues abroad.
The emergence of a new wave of pubs such as
blueFROG and the Hard Rock Café which provide space for live performances
has also helped bring more people to attend concerts.
“The future is all about the concert scene. But still
cutting an album is a must for me. I need to see the album, especially its
cover design. That’s a special feeling,” says Vijayan.
: KP Narayana Kumar ETM 131208
|
No comments:
Post a Comment