Musicfellas.in: Check out Indianised version of iTunes

The internet has democratized ideas and given the talented an opportunity to be seen and heard without spending big bucks. It's helped mainstream niches create a new means of distribution in shoring a life beyond the traditional commercial setup.

Musicfellas.in is a social discovery platform for Indian music. It focuses on the needs of independent musicians who are outside the mainstream with. The website was founded by engineers, Mayank Jain, Gaurav Shahlot and Shubhranshu Jain in September 2012, incubated by tLabs who have invested Rs 10 lakh in the company. Musicfellas has more than 400 artists listed on the website including some international ones. Mayank Jain, Gaurav Shahlot and Shubhranshu Jain founded Musicfellas in September 2012 and launched the website in November last year. The platform helps independent and aspiring musicians to explore opportunities. It also allows users to discover new music through their friends from communities and ultimately buy the music. Started with an initial capital of Rs 7 lakh, the website has received almost 15,000 unique visitors every month. Mayank feels the topmost thing to attract visitors would be their design. They are very proud of the way they have designed the website, every branding that as been done, the logo, creativity that has been rolled out. They have been highly appreciate by people around the world. "It is having a pro-artist attitude. So, we do not think of ourselves as businessman. We think of us as people who are helping out artists,"he said. The process is simple. Once the artist has recorded the track, all one has to do is mail the track to the team. After a quality check the track is uploaded on the website with exclusive profiles and buyers for each artist. Selling individual tracks at a price range starting at Rs 5 to Rs 50 and albums between Rs 50 to Rs 350. The trio focuses on the artists’ monetisation needs as 70 percent of the sales eventually go to the artist themselves. According to Jain, iTunes coming to India is not a threat, instead it is the best thing that could have happened to them "People generally weren’t use to buying music online or even offline. With iTunes coming in people have warmed up to the idea of purchasing music and it is boding very well for us'" he explained.

Having been tuned and incubated by TLabs. The team is now looking to raise further funds to develop mobile apps, focus on marketing, content acquisition and explore other revenue models. With plans to launch an app on iOS platform within this month. The team is all set to rope in 5,000 artists by the end of the year. As of now the next milestone is to top the chart and turn profitable hopefully by March 2014.