Jubin Nautiyal, Arjun Kanungo: Artistes who embraced independent music in 2023
While some of these artistes had already been working independently to some extent, this year marked a significant increase in their pursuit of independence.
In the year 2023, the music industry witnessed a notable trend as more and more music artists began embracing the independent space. While some of them had already been working independently to some extent, this year marked a significant increase in their pursuit of independence. To gain insights into this growing shift, we spoke to several singers and music composers to understand the reasons behind their decision and explore the factors driving this movement.
Why more artiste are going independent?
For Jubin Nautiyal, who is a well known playback singer popular for songs such as Raatan Lambiyan and Maanike, it was time to take the charge. “The person putting in the money is the in charge. So I didn’t want to be tied down where someone else is telling me what to do and how to do it. That is the only way I could break through the clutter,” says the singer, who released his album Tum Aaye Ho Toh independently.
He goes on, “In last 3-4 years, I have created songs for so many films and labels, it was need of the hour for me to work on a song that’s fresh and that I could release on my channel. It was also needed because in the world of Bollywood, if I am called to sing a song, all the hard work has been done, and I just come there, do my work and leave; and all the credit is given to me. So i felt that I was missing on a lot of action.”
Music composer Jigar points out how independent space lets the artiste “experiment without having any burdens.” “That’s why they are doing new stuff and taking it ahead. So Independent music plays a great role in evolving the entire music scenario and more and more artistes today including me are willing to do that,” he says.
For Salim Merchant Independent music has the advantage of having no connection with music companies or labels or film producers. “You do not need any direction and you do not need any approvals. But when working on films, you have to keep in mind a lot of things and work accordingly,” shares Merchant, who focused more on independent music this year than film music. But he goes on to point out another factor because of which, composers especially, might be moving away from taking up film projects. “A lot of composers don’t like too many people working on one single project. When it comes to me and Sulaiman, we like to do all the songs of a film. So if a producer comes to me saying they have multiple composers for a film, I would back out,” he tells us.
The struggle and the solution
But it’s not an easy task to take charge of everything- from composing to marketing to releasing the music without any external help. Arjun Kanungo, who collaborated with Japanese artistes for him album Industry 2 this year, says, “In the beginning, the biggest challenge for me was manpower. When I became independent, I was aware that teams of people work on marketing music at music labels. But now, we are building those teams with passionate people. Marketing is incredibly labour intensive when you are first starting out but we plan to keep scaling and helping the artists working with us.”
Jigar shares how the biggest constraint according to him is budget and management. “When an artiste goes without label, the biggest concern is the budget. Second, because a label is aware of how the algorithm works, they have a strategy, and a team that takes care of the promotions. An artiste may get knowledge about it but the technical know-how is a different game altogether. An independent artiste will always have less power when it comes to releasing and popularizing the song,” he explains.
Sachin, the second half of the Sachin-Jigar duo says it’s important to figure out finances and find out another source of income. “In our case, me and Jigar have established ourselves as Bollywood composers but to every budding independent artiste, I say that you will have to find a source for money, which could be shows, teaching music, online streaming or anything as a performer. It’s necessary to have that steady source of income. Having that one backup is very important. It helps you dream, make your content and push it,” says Sachin, who focused on promoting regional music independently this year.
Despite the unpredictability and associated with costs and logistics, singer Darshan Raval expresses hope for the “changing times.” He adds, “Earlier it was difficult because people used to put so much money on music videos, and the return would not be as much as one would expect. Recovery was a task. But now times are changing. People are more into audio." Giving example of his own song Mahiye Jinna Sohna, he adds, “It was released this year with just a lyrical video and yet it did so well.”
Raval says, in his journey, there have been songs on which huge amount has been spent in making and marketing and they haven’t worked well, and then there have been songs where no money was spent and they became hits. “So now it’s proven money does not make a song hit. If that would have been the case, Bollywood would have been on top. But today, you see 90 per cent of the independent songs topping the charts.”
Need of independent music?
But no matter how difficult the road it, musicians are positive that independent music helps in revolutionalising the industry. “Independent music is bringing new artistes from the smallest part of India and breaking the monopoly. Imagine that in a country of 144 crore people, there are just 10 active music composers. So statistics like these change because of Independent music. This space is helping everyone understand that the power rests in the hand of the creators and not someone who will exploit him.” Giving example of artistes like Prateek Kuhad, Sachin says, “We have seen that the shackles of Bollywood can be broken. That’s what the independent music is doing. It’s keeping the music industry in check and it’s setting up the right type of competition, wherein music is competing with music