Artistes from remote areas getting bigger audience through online medium.
Alankar Tailang, a 24-year-old final year BSE student from Bikaner, is a step closer to living his dream of becoming a singer. Tailang is one of the 700 shortlisted contestants for Nokia Music Theatre.
If selected, Tailang will be mentored by a jury of eminent artists for a month. But more importantly, if he qualifies as one of the 15 contestants from India, his track will be available on Nokia’s Ovi Music Store. “I have always wanted to be a professional singer but in Bikaner training is limited. If I get selected my dream of being trained at a national level will come true,” says Tailang.
Kulta Khan, 28, from Baiya in Rajasthan, is also preparing to perform before a larger audience than he had ever imagined. He has performed in villages in Rajasthan, but Khan is elated with the opportunity from Nokia. “I have been singing and playing the Khartal from when I was a kid. But by getting a platform like this I can now think of bigger goals.”
At a time when the Indian Television is flooded with music and dance reality shows, artists from remote regions are getting a bigger audience through the online medium. With almost 60 per cent of the music industry’s royalty coming from ringtone downloads, service providers can hardly ignore the trend. According to Crisil Research, music as part of non-voice revenue contributed 56 per cent in FY10.
Nokia, which diversified into online music sales through its Ovi store, considers India as one of its most important markets. The company has more than one million Indian users contributing to 16 per cent to its global downloads.
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For the handset maker, this initiative will help consumers connect with their passion — music. Tailang and Khan are part of a trial event to unearth talent (vocalist and instrumentalists) from remote locations.
“We first did a pilot of Nokia Music Theatre in Rajasthan. We received over 6,000 applications of which we have shortlisted 700. From these, we will be choosing 40 finalists, who would then be trained and mentored for a month. The process of selecting the 40 finalists and then finalising our jury will take another month. The best 15 among the 40 will get a track to perform. We will decide on how to take this to other regions,” said Viral Oza, marketing director, Nokia India. He believes that the programme will help talents get a platform and give music lovers a plethora of new artists.
Like Nokia, an initiative by Hungama Digital – Artistaloud – has become a convenient platform for aspirant musicians. Initiatives such as LaunchCast where artists digitally release their albums through live online performances – the tracks are digitally distributed by ArtistAloud – has become a launch pad for many.
Neha Bhasin, who launched her album ‘Tabaah’ on ArtistAloud.com through LaunchCast, had over 18,000 hits to her album. In the first three quarters, Artistaloud saw a growth of 50 per cent in downloads on the web and WAP (mobile) platforms. In the last quarter, it witnessed a growth of close to 100 per cent.
Anurag Dixit is one of the 150 artists who used www.artistaloud.com to distribute his music to fans on the web and mobile phone platforms. Even though he had the backing of a leading music company, Dixit decided to release some of his music online. The reason: “On my Facebook page where I have over 60,000 fans, they were constantly asking for digital music that they could download right away on their PCs and mobile phones.”
Users can download songs for Rs 5 on their PCs while on mobile phones Artistaloud offers five songs for the same amount. Artistaloud head Soumini Paul says: “We are building a market and it is critical to sustain the growth consistently so that the futuristic approach of consuming music via Internet, mobile and DTH becomes a habit for the consumer.”
A Ficci-KPMG report says the Indian music industry was worth Rs 8.53 billion in 2010 and has witnessed a 28 per cent decline in sales of physical music like CDs. However, there was a significant jump of 57 per cent in digital music — downloads or live streaming on the net and mobile phones.