Lesser-knows Indian songsmiths are creating a symphony

By Pranbihanga Borpuzari

On January 24, 2013, Ben Haggerty, known by his stage name Macklemore, created history. He became the second singer, after Lisa Loeb, to top the US Billboard Hot 100 chart with his song Thrift Shop without being backed by any record label. Macklemore, a white unsigned singer, used his blog to promote his music and relied on YouTube to gain popularity. Macklemore’s achievement is astounding because it is only the second time that big record houses like Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group do not have a hit song to their name since the Billboard Music Charts were formed. With a huge fan following, Macklemore has proved that in today’s digital era, record houses are slowly losing relevance. In India, startups are silently leading the revolution by showcasing talented musicians in the limelight. Some firms have hit the ground running and each one of them is ensuring they create something different and exciting. Bang on Mahadevan Kalyanaraman, 34, and Sikanth Gopinath, 37, are trendsetters when it comes to radio on the Internet. In 2010, they turned entrepreneurs and made a location-based reminder application, but lost interest soon after. “That is when the idea of RadioFlote came to us. Both of us were musicians and it was natural that we do something around music,” says Gopinath, Co-Founder, RadioFlote. According to Gopinath, there was so much good music scattered over the Internet that collating it was exciting. “I have been following the Indian rock music scene since the 1980s. There was not one place where you could get good music,” says Gopinath. RadioFlote started service in December 2010 as an online radio for independent Indian music. The Bengaluru-based firm secured startup funding of Rs. 5 lakh from The Morpheus in the same month. It also received a second round of investment for an undisclosed amount from various investors. In 2007, the idea for Pune-based Dhingana was conceived by 33-year-old twins, Swapnil and Snehal Shinde, both Bollywood buffs and lovers of Indian music. “Back then, there was no reliable streaming service that could work across platforms, and provide users easy and legal access to Indian music,” recalls Snehal, Co-Founder, CTO and President, Dhingana. With personal savings as seed money, the Shindes made a business of their passion. Last year it raised $7 million Series B funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Inventus Capital and Helion Ventures. For the BITS Pilani team of Brijesh Bharadwaj, Saurabh Gupta, Pronoot Barkakati, all 22-year-olds, and Karthik GK, 20, it was a similar story with their Bengaluru-based Tune Patrol which was trying to reach out to independent musicians. “Barkakati is an artist and he had mentioned how hard it was for independent artists to reach out to a large audience and make money from their music. This is what probably shaped Tune Patrol,” says Brijesh Bharadwaj, Co-Founder and CEO. Money came from business plan competitions, a grant from the ‘BITS Spark’ program and personal savings. They later raised $20,000 in August 2012 from the Angel Investors Consortium, an angel fund that closely works with The Hatch, also its incubator. A catchy tune “There are several people who have made fantastic music, but that is lying at home. A site like RadioFlote is trying to solve that problem. The music available on RadioFlote is good,” says Nandini Hirianniah, Co-Founder, The Morpheus. RadioFlote decided to be a genre-agnostic, pan Indian and multi-lingual online radio. “Record labels have a lot of issues,” Gopinath says. Music was never seen as a serious, respectable profession where people could make money. Those veering towards it were usually discouraged from making a career of it, he says. “With an increasing number of youth taking to music and record companies difficult to approach, we felt they needed another platform to showcase their music,” says Gopinath. Tune Patrol aims to solve the problem of reaching out to an audience, engaging and monetizing music for a thriving community of independent artists as well as helping listeners discover new music. Dhingana, on the other hand, aims to offer world-class service to Indian music lovers, something which they expect from international sites like Pandora, Spotify and SoundCloud. The aim is to build the biggest social music streaming service for the Indian market as Snehal feels music is a ubiquitous activity. Apart from Bollywood music, the company wants to become the market leader in a variety of other Indian music genres. Hitting the right notes
RadioFlote’s channels-Electronica, Rock, Metal and Fusion-are available on the web, iOS and Android platforms. Tune Patrol is a social music discovery platform that lets artists create profile pages and host their music and biographies. Fans can interact with their favorite singers and groups and purchase the music content through a social network platform. Dhingana is an on-demand streaming service for Bollywood and Indian music fans across the globe where they can find their favorite songs. It is available on mobile internet and as an application for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android platforms, Windows and Nokia devices as well as an HTML5 web application, and has already generated users in over 220 countries and territories. India has close to 100 million internet users growing at 40 percent annually, says Snehal. “By 2015, India will have 400-500 million internet users, 70 percent of which will be on mobile. In addition, 72 percent of Indians who go online are interested in Indian and Bollywood music. When it comes to streaming, we are just getting started,” says Snehal. Digital harmony
“The Internet has removed bottlenecks in music distribution and aided everyone in the ecosystem-customers, music labels and artists. It has helped music labels to expand their boundaries and access new markets globally. For artists, it means a much larger audience with varied tastes,” says Snehal. Streaming music services deliver a billion song streams per month and have paid as much as $50 million in licensing costs, says Snehal, citing industry figures. India is not far behind in aping the US, Gopinath points out, where relatively unknown singers are making it big. “Though becoming an internet rage is quite common, many musicians prefer hosting their music directly online and have people buy it from there too.” Bharadwaj points out that records and compact discs are collectibles now and the future of music distribution will be over the Internet. “Widespread adoption and innovation will come through digital music and hopefully we will be a significant part of it,” he says. Tirthankar Poddar, lead singer of hard rock band Zedde, also known as 2Blue, says, “We appreciate the support that RadioFlote extends to musicians. There is a lot more power with the artist now. Earlier you had to knock on the doors of music labels, but with the Internet, if you are smart and your music is good, it does not have to be limited to a select crowd.” Ringing in the money RadioFlote and Tune Patrol are both in the pre-revenue stage. The former is devising a subscription model which will allow subscribers to choose music, bands and create playlists. It is also looking at advertisement revenues. “We plan to share the profits with the artists,” says Gopinath. Tune Patrol will soon sell albums on its site. “We make money when the artists make money. We take a percentage cut from the earnings they make on the platform,” explains Bharadwaj. Dhingana has a revenue model similar to the likes of iTunes (pay per download) and Spotify (ad+subscription). “With the Indian government curbing piracy, helping legal streaming and emerging download players, this offers quality music for free or at reasonable prices,” says Snehal. Advertisers also see value in a platform like Dhingana that offers direct access to a focused target audience. Audio shuffle
RadioFlote caters to a wide audience with a playlist that is a mix of serious and easy listening accessed by 200 listeners per day. Today it has 250 artists as against 40-50 in the first month of its launch. Dhingana has licensing deals with over 600 music labels in India and has licensed more than one million songs. It is streaming close to 100 million minutes of music every month. Tune Patrol has signed up with close to 65 bands, hosts about 235 tracks and more than 11,000 songs have played since they launched in November 2012. “The opportunity for what we offer is very good. In the last few years, the Indie music scene has grown quite a bit and it is only going to get bigger and better,” says Bharadwaj, confidently. > Entrepreneur India May 2013
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