She is perhaps the first Indian to acquire a degree music business management, which she got from the Musicians Institute, Los Angeles, US. But instead of settling down in America and tapping lucrative opportunities there, Neli Kools came back to India to set up an online portal called www.musicbizpro.in --- the first such service in India --- to help budding singers, musicians and bands develop their careers.
“Through our portal we are promoting independent artistes and bands,’ she said. “We are providing various services to the artists under one umbrella’. The most remarkable fact is that Neli's company provides services to both polished as well as unpolished artistes.
“I feel that I am more of a technical person and to remain closer to music, I opted for music business management,” the music-savvy damsel, herself a classical singer, crooned. If this is so then why did Neli opt for a degree in music business management instead of getting straight into singing?
"I feel the music system in India is extremely unorganized and there is a huge pool of unexplored talent. When I was working in the US, I realised that there are plenty of ways for the artistes to generate money out of their music. Therefore I imported this new music expertise to bail out our budding artistes from the prying eyes of exploiters. I call my company Music Biz and not just music,” Neli explains.
“We offer services like artiste development, legal guidance, digital distribution and marketing,” says Neli. “Radio Head, a popular US band, has promoted themselves through digital media and never relied on physical sales of CDs and DVDs.” In addition, this band has created a buzz; were bestsellers last year. “If they can create such magic in US why can’t we do the similar things here,” Neli asks. “If a band or artiste writes their own material, they can choose to assign its copyright to a music publisher. It can provide them with the cutting edge and helps to generate revenue too.” Besides this, the artistes can manage their career through internet.
Why did Neli trod into this totally unknown territory? “As I’ve already mentioned there is huge talent pool in India. Being an internet based portal we envisage to reach to the talent up to small town. For different services an artist has to go to different companies for eg. Digital distribution, physical distribution, legal etc, hence Musicbizpro, a one stop shop. We not only enlighten the music enthusiast vis-à-vis the nuances of tone, tenor and pitch but also forewarn them regarding music sharks and pirates,” she said.
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