Over the last few years, the capital has seen major musical gigs by national and international independent musicians. From GnR, Gotye, David Guetta who came over to perform to festivals like Escape, South Asian Band Festival, NH7 Weekender that featured some of the top names in national and international music circuits; Delhiwallas have been getting ample doses of musical geniuses. As a result a parallel industry has cropped up that is into the business of managing independent music. Most of the artist management firms are run by hard-core music enthusiasts.
“The music scene in the capital has been growing exponentially over the last few years and the present generation that has the spending power, does not think twice before spending on their favourite musicians. They are interested not just in Bollywood music. A large void that had existed in the independent music scene is being increasingly filled up,” says Dilip Ramachandran, ex-drummer, Parikrama band, and part of the management team of Mooz entertainment that organised the GnR concert in the city last year.
In her school, Ritnika Nayan used to play drums for her school band and has been an avid music lover. She went on to study music business in her masters and worked as a music promoter in UK. On returning to the country, she realised there weren’t many companies that could employ her. Thus, she started her own firm, Music Gets Me High (MGMH), a company that manages independent artists and their shows in the capital, provides music consultancy and is also into merchandising.
“One needs to have knowledge of the type of music that one is managing and promoting. I personally don’t know much about certain genres like metal, which is why I don’t push too many metal bands. Moreover you need to have a sense of what the audience is listening to these days. My personal tastes do play a role in who I manage, but in the end it’s a toss up as to what’s most important to me,” she says. MGMH also provides one of the largest rehearsal spaces, Sound Station with state-of-the-art equipment for the musicians to jam and lounge.
Vijay Nair, owner, Only Much Louder (OML), another popular independent artist management firms, that has been behind some of the biggest festivals and artists says that he started out by managing bands that he loved listening to and then decided to start his company that organises concerts, gigs, festivals and even a record label.
“Just like most start-up ventures, there were roadblocks and specifically because I was dealing with ‘niche music’. But eventually we managed to convince everybody about the scope. We listen to a lot of bands and work with multiple venues across the country to create properties and artist tours. A lot of emphasis is on making the tour work for everyone — artists, fans and our venue partners,” says Vijay.
OML is also engaged in digital distribution of independent music and looks into issues like royalty and copyright of music.
These management firms have also managed to organise the independent music scene. “In the West, the independent music scene has always been absolutely organised and well-coordinated. However, in India many artists and bands used to face trouble in getting proper platforms to perform. Now that is a thing of the past,” puts forth Abhishek Mathur, guitarist and member of fusion band, Advaita.