Members of the music industry outline ways of supporting artistes

The halting of gigs during the pandemic has been a blow to indie musicians

Nearly one-and-a-half years after the pandemic first crippled the industry, this is not the time anymore for stakeholders in the music business to count their woes. It's time, instead, to look for solutions. It's time to rally together and find ways of ensuring that musicians don't feel the financial pinch of physical gigs being paused. Digital music platform OK Listen! recently did that, when they announced that artistes would get 100 per cent of the revenue from their songs being streamed for the rest of 2021. It's an encouraging move. But there's more that needs to be done since it is still an uphill battle, and the new order the industry finds itself in needs new mechanisms to ensure that artistes aren't shortchanged.

One thing that studios can do, for instance, is reinvent their spaces in such a way that artistes can use them for live streams of gigs, feels singer-songwriter Ankur Tewari. "I'm really impressed with what Sherrin [Varghese] has done with his music studio, where he has put up a green screen that serves as an interesting backdrop for gigs," Tewari says, with OK Listen! co-founder Vijay Basrur adding that when such concerts are held, the ticketing platforms for the events should disburse the money to the artistes as soon as possible so that the musicians' cash flow doesn't dry up. He says, "Some of these platforms also do merchandise-related stuff. So, they can tell artistes, ‘We will give you discounts if you create cool merchandise to sell along with the music.'"

Ankur Tewari, Chaitanya Kataria and Vijay Basrur

Chaitanya Kataria, co-founder of the label Gully Gang Entertainment, has another piece of advice for online music platforms. "This is an opportunity for them to start programmes that would allow for upcoming artistes to gain grants or funding, and take part in competitions for more visibility," he tells us, explaining how, at a time like this, newbies need more help than those who are already signed to a label or management company.

But the onus to lend a helping hand doesn't lie on industry stakeholders alone. It lies on us as consumers too, though it's not as simple as just buying music or merchandise to help artistes out. Tewari tells us about how streaming platform Bandcamp gives 100 per cent of the revenue to artistes for songs played on every Friday. So, choose that platform on that day to come to the aid of artistes. Also, Kataria feels that it's high time we started paying for premium subscriptions for streaming platforms, because that will make the music-listening ecosystem more profitable, meaning that some amount of money flows down to the creators, even if indirectly.

"There's a consumer-behaviour problem in India where people are willing to pay '1,000 for a one-time live gig, but won't pay the same amount for a year's worth of premium streaming," he points out, adding that it's not just about revenue - these platforms ensure that artistes are more discoverable since users get many aligned recommendations when they choose a single track.

Basrur adds that artistes often launch crowdfunding initiatives to finance their albums. Contribute to these, because for lots of listeners, music has been a source of succour during the dark days of the pandemic. Isn't it thus time for us to actually give something back, instead of adopting a mindset where we expect songs to be served to us on a silver platter, for free?