Armaan Malik on Ed Sheeran, Post Malone performing in India: ‘This shows how big the market of India has become’

Singer Armaan Malik talks about the growing live music scene in India with several international acts, and how homegrown artists are taking advantage.

From Imagine Dragons to Rema to Backstreet Boys to Post Malone, the year is turning out to be a great one for music lovers with global stars making a pit stop in the country, and plugging in their music. And singer Armaan Malik feels it is a reflection of people accepting that India is a huge market to explore.

Armaan Malik recently performed at Dehradun as part of Royal Stag Boombox live gig

In fact, he feels the live music scene has made a comeback in India in a stronger avatar after the pandemic, revealing he has had the busiest show calendar in the last few months.

“It’s been the busiest show calendar for me for the past few months, I’ve never done so many shows back-to-back. I’m really glad that the scene has opened up so much that there are so many events and so many shows happening across the country. And so many more headline tours are happening, which is something an artist really looks forward to,” Malik tells us.

The 27-year-old continues, “I did my debut India tour last year. And being in the scene for almost 14-15 years, you would have thought I would have done at least four or five India tours by now but my first one was last year. And that shows how much the Indian scene was slacking behind and now in the last few years has caught up and becomes such an explosive industry”.

Here, Malik, known for singing in Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam and Kannada, picks the surge in international acts in India as an example.

“Firstly, not only for Indian artists only, but also for international acts who have come here in the last three or four years and made their presence felt for the fans here. We’ve seen the likes of Ed Sheeran; we’ve seen the likes of Justin Bieber (who was scheduled to come) and Post Malone. This shows how big the market of India has become. And while that is happening, homegrown artists like us are also getting,” he says.

“Backing in stadiums, backing in arenas and not just doing club shows, not just doing college shows, or the usual private wedding gigs that everyone does in our country. The fact that a fan is paying a certain amount to buy a ticket to go to their favourite Indian artists show.

That has happened in the last three years and I couldn’t be prouder of the Indian music scene,” added the singer, who recently performed a live show in Dehradun.

Opening up about the need to perform in smaller cities, he says, “I think smaller cities have even more love than the major cities. Considering not a lot of concerts happen in these cities. The fans here are craving for their favourite music artists, waiting to listen to them live”.

“I never performed a concert in Dehradun before… The excitement of seeing something for the very first time, that’s something no one can ever describe,” he ends.