India's evolving popular music landscape

• Author: Michael, P. Ryan
• Position: PhD, Director of the Creative and Innovative Economy Center of the George Washington University Law School
• Pages: 9-11

9

1 MTV – an American

network based in

New York launched in

August 1981.

The original purpose of

the channel was to

play music guided by

on-air hosts known as

VJs (video jockeys).

2 B2B – business-to-

business

3 B2C – business-to-

consumer

>>>

INDIA’S EVOLVING

POPULAR MUSIC

LANDSCAPE

An economics graduate from Delhi University,

Mr. Churamani was initially a journalist, writing

about sports, film and music for the

Weekly Sun

, a

New Delhi-based youth magazine. But, he soon

became more interested in getting involved in

the business of music rather than merely writing

about it, so in 1987 he joined Mumbai-based CBS

Gramophone Records and Tapes India Ltd.

Having had a taste of life with an international

record label, he went on to join a start-up that

had acquired the Warner Music license for India

to become one of a team of five at Magnasound

India Pvt. Ltd founded by Shashi Gopal in 1988.

Innovator of the Indian

music marketplace

Magnasound revolutionized the Indian market for

Western music. “There were two basic problems

in the Indian music marketplace: first, not just

Indian music, but even international music was

sold on poor-quality cassettes; second, music

from Britain and the U.S. was released months af-

ter it was released in their home markets. By then

the pirates had already saturated the market. We

changed that,” Mr. Churamani explains.

Atul Churamani is one of India’s foremost popu-

lar-music innovators. In the 1980s, he helped in-

ternational music sales take off in India by syn-

chronizing the Indian release of albums by artists

such as Michael Jackson and Madonna with their

international release and by distributing them on

high-quality, attractively packaged cassettes.

With the arrival of MTV1in India in the 1990s, he

created Indian music videos for the channel and

established the Indian pop-music marketplace. In

2005, his

King Khan

compilation album of Indian

music remained in the German charts for 12

weeks and broke into the top 20 list of hits. That

same year, the American band Black Eyed Peas

adapted music by one of his songwriters to pro-

duce “Don’t Phunk with my Heart.” It became the

most popular song in the world for that year.

Mr. Churamani wants the world to listen to Indian

music and he wants mobile phone makers and

other businesses to be his distributors. He is one

of India’s B2B2music innovators.

Making and selling music has never been more

challenging. As Mr. Churamani notes, “ When I got

into the business it was about selling recordings

in particular formats. Who now cares about CDs? I

sell our music on cell phones. But, it’s not a cata-

log deal,” he continued, “it’s an exclusive deal – my

best new music and artists are available only on

one brand of cell phone. Now, we have a million

sellers, again.”

For a long time Mr. Churamani was an “A and R

guy” in the music business that is, his job cen-

tered on selling the artist and the repertoire to

consumers on physical formats like vinyl records,

music cassettes and compact discs. “But,” he

notes, “my job has evolved to become very differ-

ent now. I am bullish about artist concerts and

events that sell our artists to consumers, but oth-

erwise the B2C3model no longer works. We in the

music business are now in the B2B model.”

Music producer, Atul Churamani, Vice President of Saregama India Limited, has been a driving force in

developing the popular music market in India. This profile by Michael, P. Ryan, PhD, Director of the

Creative and Innovative Economy Center of the George Washington University Law School, offers some

interesting insights into the challenges associated with the evolving commercial landscape for popular

music in India.

Photo: Atul Churamani