'Recorded music market in India should be based on free market practices'

'As time goes by, we will see more investments happening', said Fernandes

If they get fair value for their product, producers and record labels will flourish and trigger more investment, Blaise Fernandes tells Shubhomoy Sikdar

How do you see the market for non-film music emerging and how can opportunities in that be tapped better?

The music market, as it stands today, comprises of 65-70 per cent film music and the remaining is non-films where you don’t see a lot of local genres evolving. But with the opening up of digital media with smartphone penetration and better internet connectivity, you can see how each state has three to four kinds of different dialects and from those dialects folk music and genres also evolve. As time goes by, we will see more investments happening there but for investments to go there, you have to empower the people (involved) who are mainly the producers and the record labels. And if they get fair value for their product, they will flourish and trigger more investment.

That sounds like even the projected market is very fragmented. But for an (music) industry which you yourself say is small (around Rs 1,100 crore, according to IMI), how can you scale up consumption?

Let’s go up to the basics. Right now, according to most estimates, there are 500 million smartphones in the country and most reports also suggest that by 2022, that number will jump to 850 million. There will be consolidation, aggregation and there will be acquisitions. That’s how the whole system will get fuelled with more entrepreneurs coming in. Which is why I feel, the music industry touches multiple facets from Digital India to Make in India. So, when new labels get created, entrepreneurs come into the play and consolidation like buy-outs or issuing IPOs will also happen as with other industries.

Indian film music has takers abroad with songs going viral and radio stations across the globe, especially where the diaspora is present, beaming those songs. Have you started seeing monetisation opportunities there also? Can that emerge as a standalone revenue channel?

That’s an untapped market but we realise the importance since we see penetration happening in a big way. What needs to happen is that the pirated websites outside India are blocked first and those are issues that needs to be dealt with by the governments. Once that happens in big markets outside, people will move to paid services which is how the ecosystems work abroad. But as far as opportunities are concerned, it is big. A parallel can be seen in the fact that the Latin American music makes see more money in North America than it does in its home turf. Then there is something like Korean Pop or K-Pop which has an international appeal. There again, the government and the industry will have to work together to develop genres and artistes which can be taken outside.

Which are the genres in India that have potential to make it big outside?

I believe Punjabi music has done very well for itself without any help. Now in North America, there is a big Telugu population and the music from the Telugu speaking regions in the country can do well if there is a proper strategy. That being said, to come up with a strategy for local music to travel abroad, we need to develop a robust ecosystem within India. 

Tell us a bit about the industry’s emphasis on what you term as fair value. How does one determine it for something like music which is consumed and used across platforms?

One should be paid according to the demand of the product and how it is used further to generate revenues for others. We want it to be a free market so that entrepreneurs, artistes and genres can come out. Presently what we get is small while the industries that use our music are much bigger. What we are seeing now is a David-feeding-the- Goliath situation. There are global practices for charging what you use in public performance or on different platforms, there is a science that goes behind the tariffs and that can be adopted here as well.