2023 was an exciting year for the Bollywood music industry. Here we have all episodes 1 to 10 of the conversations and critiques by Smule India Community members Bharathi Sai and Nidhi Agarwal team members. The following embed is a playlist of all ten parts of this conversation hosted on the partner YouTube site. Use the next button for ten episodes of approximately 7 to 10 minutes. Thanks to YouTube for hosting the videos. Please visit our Youtube Channel for more music videos and episodes of In Conversations with……
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
END THOUGHTS
This ends the 2023 year Bollywood Music Awards discussions. Please let us know your thoughts and write your comments in the comments section. We will be eager to hear how you all found these discussions useful.
This week we are bringing you a mighty singer from Smule Inida Community, Bharathi Sai. Here are the three parts of video interviews recorded earlier this year and published on the Instagram and YouTube channels of the blog site. https://www.youtube.com/@sibteamsmuleblog7483
Part 1
Bharathi and her earlier memories of music training in Carnatic
Part 2
Part 3
END NOTES
Carantic music is the essence of India’s music. There are a lot of musicians who dedicated their lives as a dedication to knowing this music to its deepest understanding. Bharathi is a musician who dedicated their whole life to knowing Carnatic music and her dedication to it is beyond just asking for fame and attention. As she says “If one’s destiny is to be associated with Music then he /she will be a musician and fetch fame”. Let us hope Bharathi and her talent be recognized soon. All the best in your music career.
Some of the highlights of the Sanjay Subramanyan concert. The event is so well organized by the SIMA Los Angels. One song that stood out among the initial 45 mins was Thyagaraaja yoga vaibhavam in Ananda bhairavi written by Muthuswami deekshidar. A very unique composition and the way Sanjay presented it displaying the songs’ main characters so elegantly. The pallavi consists of a phrase that is reduced from (tyagaraja yoga vaibhavam … to vam!) and madyamakalam phrase that is repeatedly extended, from “swa prakaasham” to “swaroopa prakaasham” took listeners through the images of a tapering cow tail and a river flowing narrow to wide in its literal sense.
Next unique presentation was in
Khambhoji Indu shruthi smriti Purandaradasa in Jhampa thala
I think this song set apart Sanjay’s concert many of his contemporaries. What a philosophical meaningful song he choose for his concert. it takes the audience through that shruthi and the subtext smriti. our great teachers gave us many shruthi and that formed many matha’ and yet the truth is that there is only one god, people call him in different names.
Few of the unique songs he chose towards second half of the concert Kulam tharum selvam, A devotional tamil song, It is in praise of lord Narayanna Lord vishnu. Written by the famous devotee to Vishnu Thirumangai azwar presented in Hamsavinodini and Adi tala. This was the song he choose to display the mridangam and violin accompanying artist as well.
Beautifully done with thalam adi both the instrumental performances were outstanding. Kudos to S Varadarajan and Neyveli Venketesh. There was only those two and no grandeur accompanying instruments yet no one felt any void. These two talented musicians filled the gap very well and took audience through a lot of percussion and harmony on beautiful violin.
Raagam thanam pallavi was beauty in its self. I have posted few of the excerpts from this presentation as recorded from the concert for you all to enjoy. Agathin azhagu mukhathil theriyum was the pallavi. Beautiful presentation of the Tamil proverb.
And then a Bharathi song
Ninnaiye rathi yendru ninakirenadi-Kannana
Best was kept toward the last was Japata japata harinaam by Irayimman thumpi in Todi (not sure). Adi talam
kaNDE nA uDupiya taaLam: aTa Composer: Purandara Daasar Language: Kannada
When the three and half hour fly by a Sanjay Subramanyan clad in white clothes so unique of his presence and smiling face told a story as he sang “Agathin azhagu mukhathil theriyum”, very true. Sangeetha Kalanidhi at a young age is indeed is great presence in modern classical scene. The flyer that accompanied invites all his listeners and enthusiasts to guess the missing notes game on his YouTube series of “On that note…”
A whole night of journey through notes and raagas. What is so unique was there was not a moment of missed thalam, clear presentation with very well thought selected unique numbers. Raaga aalapana took one through scapes that never had another contemporaries took. Tonight again he is performing at San Jose, CA. Please go watch his concert tonight and make it a big success.
The term Indie is a new term for India’s music industry. For the novice, Indie is defined in Western music as independent artists who produce their own music. Traditionally India’s music business revolved around the Bollywood movie industry, and it remained the same to a substantial extent till today. For any aspiring musician, success always meant becoming a Playback singer. In the last decade or so when supported by YouTube, many youngsters decide to delve into independent music production. The availability of excellent quality recording equipment and a revolution of social media influencers made it possible for many promising talents to find a world stage at the tip of their fingers. Few success names to list here are Nucleya, Emiway Bantai, Gajendra Verma, Darshan Raval, Divine, Shirley Setia, Arjun Kanungo, Nikhil D’Souza, Vivek Verma, Badshah, Amit Trivedi, Shravan J Nair, Shubham Sarita, Papon, Benny Dayal, Jonita Gandhi, and Sanam Puri.
Aditya Bhardwaj
The aim of this analysis is to understand the business aspect of this music industry and look at the 2022 top 10 Indie artists who made business through music streaming. When you decide to make your own music, you have two choices, one is to find a contract to sign with a recording company. This option, although it allows you to make your own music the ultimate choice of what you write, comes from the recording label’s interests. So, in a way, this is semi-independent production.
A true indie artist is someone who writes, records, produces merchandise, markets, publicizes, and deals with all financial dealings of record production. The best part of this is every penny that you make from your music goes to your pocket. A lot of different artists that you hear today as grammy winning artists came as independent artists and they all had put their 10,000 hours of arduous work behind every music that they produced. Listen to Ed Sheeran in this embed here.
We also wanted to see how an Indie artist can make a living. To make real money your song must be played millions of times over the streaming services. The number of artists out there whose streaming total is a million and to that matter billion accounts for 0.000002% of total artists. In the prorate model that is sued by streaming services like Spotify, this is what one may expect. For example, an indie artist who signs up with a streaming service like Spotify pays their artists $0.0038 per stream on average. For a reasonable number of 10,000 streams, the payout is between $60 to $84. This is not revenue that sustains any musician to find a living out of this business. There are plenty of other streaming services like Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer’s, Pandora, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, and Tidal. All streaming services have a unique style of royalty payment to the artists. For example, Deezer pays directly to the artist when a fan clicks their favorite artist’s song on their platform. Apple Music seems to advertise that they pay $0.01 / stream and that is the highest of many available there. That is about $6 to $10 per one thousand streams. Following are the payout rates for the major streaming services as royalties to artists.
Apple Music 0.01; YouTube Music 0.008; Deezer 0.0064
Briefly, online streaming services do not make a constant income, yet it is money for an artist’s hard work. Many artists make more money from their tours and on-stage performances. It is also a true test of the artist, if he /she is good people will recognize their talent. There is no straightforward way out. Take your band out and go perform out there. Even if only one person is listening to your music it is a beginning, that listener is the very first fan of your music. Cherish all the small steps. Many artists thus tend to be in a main profession other than music and that is not a feasible method to pursue a career as a full-time professional. The scene is changing rapidly with social media platforms allowing you to post your songs on their platforms.
Anything is achievable provided one sets targets and works towards them. Failures guaranteed. Learn from the failures and don’t hesitate a minute after each failure to get up and try again with the lessons learned from the previous failures in perspective. Each time you will do a better job than the previous time. Small improvements at each time will make big improvements and make your final product perfect.
The great India Singers on Smule Sing 