Five Finalists of Smule-Mirchi Coverstar
Kritirupa Sarkar 
Ashmik Patil -Winner 
Zeeshan Khan 
Susmita Guha Thakurta 
Priyanka Das
INTRODUCTION
This is a moment of joy for all of us to hear this achievement when Kritirupa Sarkar went onto to be the finalist from Smule Mirchi Cover Star contest. This is much advertised event on Smule who partnered with Mirchi to run this contest.
India’s 656 Million USD FM Radio Industry
We thought it is high time we have to write about this FM radio Industry in India’s music. A change in the way India listen to music came when India’s government decided to open up India’s air time to private parties. This brought quality sound waves of music to everyone that helped an entire country who used to be hooked onto one single station, All India Radio.
A very popular pass time for an entire nation is to turn a radio on the background during any activity. Be it a coffee shop or a “Thattu” shop (thatched road side shops) where locals hang around and dream about becoming a singer in Bollywood. A radio is the cheapest entertainment one can have despite their financial status.
According to “India FM Radio Industry Forecast and Opportunities, 2019”, the report points to a rapid growth of this industry in the coming year, unlike its slow pace in previous years.
Mirchi – a FM Radio station
What is Mirchi? It is the representation of India’s best hot peppers. As the name represents it is one of hottest happening Radio FM from India’s main land. With its radio stations, running 24×7 in major cities is the only station in India with a proper top chart with some statistics to back up its credibility. Its record charts are right out of the chart prepared by The Times of India (TOI) the English language daily of India. Its frequency is 98.3 in India.
Originally, inception of a great private radio content on FM frequencies came from Times group itself, and it was known as Times FM when they obtained the license from Government of India who, decided to sell time slots for air time to private sectors. In 1998, Times FM lost the license when Government decided suddenly to pull off from the decision to privatize the air time in India. Later in 2000 when government offered the air time Entertainment Network (INDIA) Limited won the bid again and started broadcast under the name Radio Mirchi. IT’S HOT.
Its weekly Top 20 count down with RJ Suren (shown above), on Saturdays, 7-9 pm is the most popular show as one may guess. Its top charts are also published on TOI and stand a lot credibility at the same level of respect of Billboard charts in USA. As a music blog been interested in Bollywood music we will be publishing the top countdown from RJ Suren here weekly and you may send your Smule performance to us to add as the pick of the top song from Smule by Smule Singers. This weeks top count down may be found on the Side bar.
Smule and its prospects In India- A bigger picture
The Smule in India is partnering with Times Bridge group who invested 20 million USD in Smule. The Smule President Bill Bradford says in an interview to Fortune (Business edition), some of the very interesting insights. The partnering with Idol India and Times group owned Radio Mirchi, all are their efforts towards building a business model in India. So what is their business plan? Smule will provide a platform to some outstanding singers; Hope is that Mumbai’s music industry will be using it as a tool or an integral part of hunting for a talent; Why Smule? because the resources needed for any other music talent hunt is enormously expensive and labor intensive. In other words everything in this age is related to Smart phone technology and now finding a talent is at the music directors finger tips.
We have written about this trend when “Yayum contest” and “Pondatee contest” was launched and we spoke with music directors. We had Malayalam music director Kailas Menon Sir and Music director Shabir sir did spoke with us or wrote to us and expressed their enthusiasm about the same prospects. Many other celebrity singers have come on Smule Sing since then and launched their profile that brought a lot attention from all of India’s Bollywood industry. The app as many users consider as very valuable in their professional development and research done by us interviewing many singers reveal that it is considered as a fantastic medium for self expression for an artist. Bill, continues in his interview that they are kind of a bit handicapped in understanding the different culture of India. That is where they see the money obtained from the Times group is going to be utilized and the know how of the land is going to benefit them from this partnership.
That having said so clearly, he also mention some global trends from their users “US users tend to be uneven, between opposite sexes, with more women users than men; while India have an evenly distributed ratio and also the singers from India tend to aim for higher quality in singing; while some countries like Indonesia aim for having fun with the app.”
Rishi who is Times Bridge CEO is a Princeton graduate and is the co-founder and lead Times Bridge, the U.S.’s largest venture firm with a mission of bringing the world’s best ideas to India. He have earlier done magic when built and led Twitter’s operations in India as Vice President, Asia Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Twitter. He led Twitter’s entry into markets across Asia/Middle East. The right guy around here seems like poised to make it big for Smule in India.
The app is poised to be very much like an essential tool for a south india singer “shruthi box”. In the hands of a singer or performer the Smule Sing app could be an essential tool for perfecting their art. We are very excited to hear all the news right from the Smule President and excited about the prospects of being a big partner with Smule in their adventure in India, whose music and musicians are so important for people behind here.
Manorama Music – a successful Model from South India
https://www.youtube.com/user/manoramamusic
In south, there were much smarter people who saw the power of music and invested in music much earlier than Times group. Kerala’s newspaper called ‘Malayala Manorama’ who launched a music label and produced a number of music tracks and is one of the best known music label extremely popular and successful on YouTube. The owners are M. M. publications (Maman Mapila), who is the founding father of the very popular news paper, read throughout the world by Keralites. This could be a direction Smule-Times group could follow, which will give a life to many super talents on Smule Sing.
https://www.youtube.com/user/manoramamusic
SMULE MIRCHI COVER STAR – RESULTS
Mumbai born and brought up Ashmik Patil is a singer, writer and a composer has been learning India’s Classical vocals under the guidance of Ustaad Aslum Hussain Khan, Pandit Bhavdeep Jaipurwale and Pradeep Panditji for 9 years. He has completed a diploma in music production from Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (Chennai) under the guidance of Mr Barry Hogan. Ashmik has learnt western classical vocals under the guidance of a renowned Spanish singer Mili Vizcaino. He has been performing all over India and at international level with his band. His Smule ID ashmiic
Kritirupa was featured on this blog before as our featured singer. Here is the link to her feature
Kriti was reached on her phone, when we heard the news. She said, it was one of her best times in her singing career. Kriti said all she did is just sang one of her favorite songs from the Smule-Mirchi profile, and never hoped for anything. Probably she is the only singer from Smule, that really seems like a regular Smule user among the finalists. Other finalists singers just made their entry into the Smule Sing, when they heard about the competition. Picked from more than 35K entries, Kriti said it is “My Birthday is today and my birth star seems to shine bright on my fortune” She laughs big.
Here is Kriti’s entry for the competition
Kriti got selected to a top one hundred and then she was selected to the top five contestant selected to participate in a final selection round. Despite all the odds, this achievement is phenomenal. This is most deserving for a Smulean who spend a lot of time on Smule making collaborations and make friends to her music. This is the small promo video shot when Kriti was selected to the top five.
In the Finals, Kriti along with other four finalists was really fortunate to get that dream of many on Smule Sing to sing in front of the celebrity judges, Jonita Gandhi, Meet Bros, Kanika Kapoor and Tony Kakkar. They assessed and evaluated these top 5 entries. Kriti later added this information the judge Kanika Kapoor did not able to attend the event and it was Sukriti and Prakriti Kakkar joined the judges.
Kriti with Tony Kakkar
Kriti with Jonitha Gandhi
The 5 finalists battled it out at an on-ground event in front of fans and media. One winner is declared the winner at the event who then be groomed for the coveted performance at Mirchi Music Awards 2019.
Kriti says this about her co-singers “This was one bunch of very talented five” that she had a lot of happy moments that she cherish a life time. She shared some of the very moments during the competition with all of us here.
A memorable moment in Kriti’s life
What a beautiful moment in her life. Just like Kelly Clarkson sing “This is a moment some people wait for a whole life” but it came to Kriti in a precious moment like this. We are more ecstatic than Kriti. All the best for your singing career Kriti. Lots of regards and love from all Smule community and we will cherish all the joy you shared with all of us. Keep reading about all other singers here. None of these singers were interviewed all information as appeared on Mirchi Cover star competition page. So this is an acknowledgement and reference for the same source.
Zeeshan Khan belongs to the reputed Rampur Sahaswan Gharana of India’s Music. He has been training under his father Ustad Maqbool Husain Khan since age 3. From the age of 11, he has been performing across India and abroad for Music Concerts and has been a part of collaborations from musicians all over the world. He has been awarded many awards on the national and international level and recently he has been Graded as an A-Grade artist by All India Radio and the Govt of India.
Priyanka Das from Kolkata is a singer by profession. She has trained for 2 years under Guru Joy Bhattacharyaa that has made her better at singing. Priyanka has been a part of many reality shows in Bengal and has really discovered herself in this process. Her dream is to inspire people with her music.
Born in a city of joy, Kolkata, Susmita Guha Thakurta has her roots deep within the India’s culture. From the age of 2, she was trained in Hindustani classical music by her father Sri Kalyan Guha Thakurta. In this musical journey, she got recognition through many competitions and reality shows in Bengal. Susmita is a software engineer by profession but music is the driving force in her life.
The great India Singers on Smule Sing 