AC Blog

Being a musician myself I’ve been trying to find ways to break into the music industry here in India. But it then hit me, what music industry was I thinking about? We Indians do have a music industry that stands on its own don’t we? Well, sadly that’s not entirely true. The music industry here runs because of the film industry. Most of you who are reading this must have heard or at least have seen some part of an Indian film previously I’m sure and you would know that the theme cannot exist without a bunch of songs backing it. In fact a movie without songs in them would be accepted in a very different perspective.

These films which release (around 700 films are released each year only from Bollywood which is our mirror to Hollywood, and that is with out counting the huge number of films released in our regional languages) get publicity because of these songs. The number of solo artists are very few and the number of ‘bands’ that are on records and successful are even more fewer.

So the majority of music production that happens is for these films. Here the industry doesn’t work like the way it does in the UK and US. There is no concept of a band/artist sending out demo tapes, getting signed by a record label, working with a producer and then listening to their singles being aired on radio. In fact the producer doesn’t exist here!

The film director hires a music director who makes the basic music/song structure. He then hires an arranger who then hires a bunch of musicians and programmers who get paid on a daily basis. They finish programming the music in about ten days/month and then the director takes these session files to the studio. In the studio the chief engineer records the vocal parts and any other acoustic instruments that are necessary. He then starts with the mixing.

So someone like me who writes his songs in English and has a total different approach to the recording and mixing process does find it difficult to find a place in the industry because most of the engineer’s today are self taught and very few have the right balance between aesthetics and theory (but there are a quite a number of people who do a great job). So all I and those others like me can do is wait till we can climb up there and strike a balance. But until then we’ll have to squeeze into the system and hope that we stay alive and creative.

The main reason why this industry is stuck in the same place for the past few decades is that it is not very open to change. The equipment here is great, people are ready for a technology change but not an artistic and creative one..

varun