Currently on an India tour for his new album Shakkar, indie artist Raghu Dixit from The Raghu Dixit Project is happy with the reception the album is getting, especially his song Patta, which he has sung in multiple languages. “Tamil and Telugu are not my natural languages and it's not something that I even know how to speak. I can only say so. ‘Kunjum kunjum’ in Tamil. So, phonetically I had to write it all down everything in Kannada and sing it in the studio. But I did spend some time with each lyricist of the respective languages, who helped me. They also kind of wrote the lyrics in English in such a way that I could get a grasp of the pronunciation correctly,”he says.
Giving a fresh perspective on the relation between indie music and streaming and social media, he asserts that things have become more difficult now. “There was no Internet when we started. But right now, the whole fight against algorithms and numbers and how much you have to spend to market your music, has made things very difficult,“ he says, adding, “While we thought the Internet was a blessing five years ago to reach to our audiences directly, now these so-called platforms have put a humongous barricade in between called SEO and therefore to fight over these algorithms and again pour money for indie band, it’s impossible.”
The artiste adds, “I've started to speak to all these so-called social media marketing companies in the music field, and everyone comes back with a budget of ₹six to eight lacs minimum for a song to market 360 degree. And this is apart from the money you spend music recording and then shooting the video. Where is the return coming back from? The YouTube views and by the time the streaming trickles down, you're already old. So, it is really crazy how everything is about instant noise.”
{{/usCountry}}The artiste adds, “I've started to speak to all these so-called social media marketing companies in the music field, and everyone comes back with a budget of ₹six to eight lacs minimum for a song to market 360 degree. And this is apart from the money you spend music recording and then shooting the video. Where is the return coming back from? The YouTube views and by the time the streaming trickles down, you're already old. So, it is really crazy how everything is about instant noise.”
{{/usCountry}}Raghu insists that everything is now about “that one spur of the moment marketing”. “Indie music does not have that kind of money to push that kind of content and that large numbers. Unfortunately, because of which it takes a long time to get a song heard. Even four years ago when COVID was on, the algorithms were not that tough to crack. But now, without putting money behind these streaming platforms, there's no way you can get your numbers up,” he ends.