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Shreya/Sonu/Arijit or Youtube/Spotify - Who Really Makes Money From Bollywood Songs?
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"80 to 90% of income for all artists, even Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal, comes from live events only. YouTube pays barely 1-2 paise per stream today."
This shocking revelation from Gaurav Dagaonkar exposes the broken economics of the music industry. While millions stream their favorite songs, artists make almost nothing from digital plays - a problem that led him to build Hoopr, India's leading music licensing platform.
Gaurav Dagaonkar is the Co-founder and CEO of Hoopr, India's leading music licensing platform serving over 200,000 creators and 125+ enterprise clients including Myntra, ITC, and Marico. An IIM Ahmedabad MBA who rejected corporate placements to pursue music, Gaurav spent over a decade as a successful Bollywood music director working on films like Joker, Heartless, and Lanka. His YouTube channel Songfest has garnered half a million followers. After experiencing the industry's broken economics firsthand, he built Hoopr, which has raised multiple funding rounds and revolutionized how creators access licensed music. Host Akshay Datt explores how domain expertise combined with business acumen created this remarkable entrepreneurial success story.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
👉Industry Economics: Music streaming pays artists only 1-3 paise per play, forcing 80-90% of artist income to come from live performances
👉Market Opportunity: Only 1-2% of venues comply with music licensing laws, representing a massive untapped market
👉Customer Validation: Hoopr interviewed 150+ creators and 50+ brands before building their platform, ensuring strong product-market fit
👉Revenue Model Innovation: Rejecting minimum guarantee models in favor of transparent unit economics created sustainable growth
👉Creator Impact: Independent artists can earn more from a single micro-sync license than years of streaming revenue
👉Copyright Complexity: Indian artists gave away both publishing and master rights, unlike Western markets where artists retained publishing control
#entrepreneurship #startup #musicindustry #creatoreconomy #iimahmedabad #bollywood #musictech #foundingindia #musiclicensing #startupjourney #businessbuilding #artistrights #copyrightlaw #digitalcreators #musicbusiness #startupfunding #productmarketfit #indianstartups #creativeindustry #founderstory #musicentrepreneur #techinnovation #platformbusiness #revenuemodel #sustainablebusiness #startuplife #entrepreneurmindset
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
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Transcript
Music Industry Ownership Dynamics
00:00:00
Speaker
All the labels like Sare Gama, T-series, they own everything. They own the underlying books and they own the sound recording. Whereas in the West, most labels only own the masters and the publishing often was retained by the artist or managed by a publisher.
Exploring Music Revenue Streams
00:00:15
Speaker
What is the TAM for music? Like how much comes from YouTube? How much comes from Spotify? Shanman sang for me for 50,000.
00:00:25
Speaker
I remember once Shreya had paid her only some 40,000 and they didn't care. They were like, we love the song, you know what I have no problem. Even Arijit saying, we are very affordable folks.
00:00:37
Speaker
But otherwise fundamentally 80 to 90% incomes of the live
Journey from MBA to Music Entrepreneurship
00:00:41
Speaker
events. say other
00:00:53
Speaker
Gaurav, welcome to the Founder Thesis podcast. You've had a very fascinating journey. You did an MBA from the number one B school in India. I'm Ahmedabad.
00:01:04
Speaker
But instead of opting for placements, you decided to pursue your passion. You, in a way, joined the creator economy, if I can use that overused term. You became a musician, singer, director, and now you're an entrepreneur in the same space.
Balancing Passion and Income
00:01:21
Speaker
um you know, I am fascinated about how the world of music works. ah How does ah person who's thinking of taking music as a career actually make money, actually make wealth, you know? So ah these thoughts must have crossed your mind when you were doing an MBA because you would have learned to look at things from an analytical angle. ah So tell me about what was going through your mind when
00:01:51
Speaker
you were doing your MBA from Ayam Ahmedabad.
00:01:56
Speaker
Sure, Akshay. First of all, thanks for having me here. Lovely to be on this podcast
Music Industry Evolution Since 2006
00:02:00
Speaker
with you. And I'd like to begin by saying I wish the creator economy was a term when I graduated, you know so that a lot more people could have understood what is the ecosystem that I wanted to be a part of back then. ah when i When I graduated from Ayam Ahmedabad in 2006,
00:02:18
Speaker
ah There was no creator industry as such. Yes, the music industry was definitely there and it was very different back then compared to what it is now. So we're talking of close to 19, 20 years ago when there was no YouTube, no Spotify.
00:02:34
Speaker
So it was a very old school industry, Akshay, where um you needed to have an album deal with a record label in order to be considered even credible enough for someone to take seriously.
00:02:45
Speaker
Right. um So I fell in love with music during engineering, and that was the time when I was very clear that I will pursue this as a career.
Navigating Music Industry Challenges
00:02:57
Speaker
I definitely wanted to do an MBA. And when I got into IM Ahmedabad, honestly, nothing really changed as far as my decision was concerned. um To answer your question about did you you know think about how to make wealth in the industry, I'll give a very honest answer that at that point in time, I think I was probably about maybe 20 years old you know when I decided to do this, 2021.
00:03:26
Speaker
More than the money angle at that point in time, it was more about can I get a chance to express my musicianship to the world. It was really, there was no thought about what kind of money will I end up making in the industry. And I can say this even after 19 years of being in the industry today, when Hooper we meet so many youngsters, anyone of that age, the key thing that they want is for them to be discovered and heard.
00:03:52
Speaker
So my my intent during am Ahmedabad was how do i um understand this industry better? Because as I said, it was an old school industry of you had to get a label deal. How do I get to know that side of the world better?
00:04:06
Speaker
Can I get myself ah you know a label deal? Can I put out a good album? So if I were to think strictly of those days, ah it was restricted only to that. Can I make good songs?
00:04:17
Speaker
And the the entire money and the wealth angle gradually started coming in as I got into the industry.
Internship Experience at Times Music
00:04:23
Speaker
ah Indian Idol had come out by that time, right? ah People were looking at music as a career path, ah though I guess it was largely understood very few would actually make it. It's like becoming a Bollywood actor, right? I guess it's as hard and it would be as lopsided that ah maybe only 1% of people who want to get in actually make something out of themselves in the field.
00:04:48
Speaker
um So ah what was... like Like, what was your path? So you are fresh out of IM Ahmedabad and there is no self-publishing. So that self-publishing industry today of YouTube, Spotify has allowed more people to access this as a career, but there's no self-publishing at that time. So, you know, what was your path?
00:05:12
Speaker
You know, it's it's great you mentioned Indian Idol because this was back in, I think, 2004 or early 2005 when the Indian Idol frenzy had sort of gripped the country. And... Folks like us who were inside the IIM Ahmedabad campus were completely insulated from that because you know there was no time in the first year. You barely have time to ah do anything except study. So I used to get calls from my sister sometimes saying, you have no idea what's going on and you know people are going crazy about this.
00:05:41
Speaker
And ah my first brush with the industry actually came, actually, even before i graduated. so I actually interned with a ah music label when I was studying at IMM.
00:05:53
Speaker
So ill I'll touch upon that. I realized pretty early on that music labels will not visit the campus to recruit. And if I were to get into this industry, it might help if I work in this industry a little, i get to meet the people who work with the labels.
00:06:10
Speaker
So I decided to be proactive about it. And I started sending emails to label managing directors, CEOs or senior folks. One such email was sent by me. I remember in 2000, early 2005 to a gentleman named Mr. Arun Agarwal. He was the president of Times of India.
00:06:33
Speaker
And I told him that I'm a first year student at IM Ahmedabad. I am interested in becoming an artist. And for the same, I want to work with the label to understand, you know, how do the mechanics of the industry work?
00:06:45
Speaker
And in all probability, you're not going to be coming to our campus. So I'm writing to you to check if you know I could get an internship. If yes, then I will opt out of my summer placements process. It will save me the time.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I got a reply within a few hours saying you're hired. And immediately, I think he was so impressed with the email. His EA reached out and then they connected me to Times Music where I got my internship. So in 2005,
00:07:14
Speaker
I did a two month internship with Times Music. ah Why I linked it to the Indian Idol story is because it was such a beautiful internship where they structured, you know, the eight weeks that I spent there.
00:07:27
Speaker
They sort of divided two weeks of my time sequentially between four different divisions. So the first was understanding how albums are made. What is the ANR, which is the artist and repertoire division of music label, ah understanding a little about publishing, masters and copyright.
00:07:44
Speaker
Then in the second phase, I was asked to go out into the market and check how the CDs are stacked in various shops. In the third phase, I was asked to interact with different artists.
00:07:57
Speaker
And in the fourth phase, I was introduced to brand solutions. So, when I went out to the market, Abhijit Savan's Indian Idol album, Mohapatil Utahonga, was pretty much all over the Planet M's and so on.
00:08:10
Speaker
And it was very exciting to see how there is a science to retail at that point in time. i also had to this dream that, okay, when I make my album someday, I will be like CDs, I will be like standee Planet M's.
From Music Director to Entrepreneur
00:08:25
Speaker
And so I got out of IM Ahmedabad, you could say, and in 2006, not without a complete. It was not like I got out and now I have no idea what the industry is. I think those eight weeks proved to be very useful.
00:08:39
Speaker
And something I advise musicians even today, they try to study a lot about the business, try to meet folks. But yes, when I graduated, I was still as new to the industry. The only thing I had was this little internship that I had done.
00:08:53
Speaker
And my IM Mthapat degree and a guitar in hand. Yeah, that was how it was. Tell me about this, so how this industry works.
00:09:03
Speaker
A music label is what? It is a ah distribution company? Does it also... put in the capital to create an album? How does a music label work? What is a music label?
00:09:20
Speaker
Definitely.
00:09:22
Speaker
The music label is definitely an entity which is expected to put in the capital. So what they do is they scout artists and talent who they are interested in signing or whose albums or records they're interested in putting out.
00:09:38
Speaker
um In certain cases, especially today, because the cost of making music has really reduced. There are a lot of labels that expect you to make an album and come to them, especially because the supply has really gone up today.
00:09:52
Speaker
But in in the previous times and today, even today with you could say larger artists, labels are the ones who will front the money to create the album. They have a division called ANR, which is artists and repertoire.
00:10:07
Speaker
The job of these ANR folks is to keep scouting new talent. They attend live events. They are attend um festivals. They will keep looking at Instagram and YouTube today to spot who is the next big thing and where is the action happening? Where is the next pop culture moment happening?
00:10:26
Speaker
And it is their job to bring in these artists into the label fold. And ah What happens then is the label fronts these advances or you would say fronts the money.
00:10:38
Speaker
And in most cases, what tends to happen is that the product that is made, which is that album or that song, the ownership then remains with the label. So what happens in India is oh labels are definitely very much interested in collating all the ownership of the music that is made.
00:10:59
Speaker
And maybe in a little while we'll also talk about how these two rights in music have a bit of a bifurcation. There is a sound recording copyright and there is a publishing copyright. But essentially a label wants to own both of these copyrights.
00:11:14
Speaker
At this point I'll also touch upon the fact that in India film music is very very prevalent and very popular. It has always been popular. And even there, a label acquires the entire right to a film soundtrack. So when you think of labels like a Sare Gama or a T-series, TIPS, over the years they have managed to acquire the copyrights of multiple different film albums.
00:11:36
Speaker
In many cases, they will pay an upfront amount to the producer saying, okay, you've made this album, it has eight songs, I think the music director is big. i will recoup my money. Here it is X crore to buy out the copyrights.
00:11:50
Speaker
ah And in certain cases, it could be a revenue share saying, okay, you're a new movie or a very new artist. I'm not sure if I'm going to recover, but I'll release your album and I will own the copyright. I'm not paying you anything today, but it's going to be a revenue share.
00:12:04
Speaker
Now you touched upon a very important point, which is distribution. In the olden times, Akshay, the label's biggest strength was distribution. Like a T-Series in Sadegama had the muscle to put out a CD in the remotest town and city.
00:12:19
Speaker
And which is why everyone flocked to them saying, please make sure my CD is available in every city in India. It is played on every TV channel. It is your TV spots and ad spots, radio spots.
00:12:32
Speaker
Today, that dynamic has changed a fair bit. So today, because Spotify and YouTube have become massive, artists are able to access distribution nowadays without...
00:12:43
Speaker
a label necessarily. And what has emerged is intermediaries who call themselves distributors. So let's say if Gaurav is a new artist who's putting out a song, instead directly going to a label today, I could go to a distributor like a Believe or a TuneCore and there are many such companies and they will put your song on every streaming platform like a Spotify, Apple Music, a Ghana and so on.
00:13:09
Speaker
And they will collect the royalties on your behalf and share it with you. so How much do they take? What is their take rate? There are two models that distributors work. Either it is an upfront payment per year for a song which could range between say 500 rupees to a 1000 rupees to distribute a song per year.
00:13:26
Speaker
And you have to keep paying them a yearly fee and they will give you 100% the royalties. Or there is another option where you don't pay anything, but they would probably take about 15 or 20% of what your song makes.
00:13:38
Speaker
ah And different artists choose different models. Why would you give up 15% as opposed to 1,000 rupees? I mean, it sounds... unless we have one or so Yes. So there are a lot of artists who release multiple songs a year and feel that instead of, you know, 500 and 1,000 multiplied by 10, 20 upfront. And plus, don't forget that the next year when they release another 10 to 20 songs, they will have to again pay 500 or 1000 for the previous year's songs to keep them.
00:14:11
Speaker
So what tends to happen is new artists typically who don't know how much they're going to make initially go with a revenue share deal. The revenue share deal also sort of incentivizes or at least in theory is supposed to incentivize the platform to push those particular songs so that you know they have a theory that if you make money, I make money.
00:14:32
Speaker
And many a times you will see them saying, OK, I'll push it to streaming platforms and playlists. So the artist has a choice and I have in my experience, I've seen that most new artists start with the revenue share model.
00:14:44
Speaker
Eventually, when they get a bit of a handle on how much their catalog love or their songs are making, they switch to a simple paper song kind of a model and keep all the royalties for themselves. And ah so distribution, you said labels used to be important when it was physical distribution cassettes or CDs, ah which today ah is not their main value add. So what what are the other value adds of a label? The capital distribution? What else?
00:15:17
Speaker
Quite a few things. I think labels bring... oh ah an army of people who are experts who you know can work on the artist's behalf. I think the first thing a label can do is just help the artist enhance the production of the album um because they could bring in good folks to work with the artist as opposed to he or she being by themselves and working with a group of friends, right? So they could probably rope in a good producer, good studios, mixing mastering engineers,
00:15:46
Speaker
Sometimes they are able to using their network rope in another artist for collaboration, which often helps in discovery of new artists. For example, there is a new artist called Char Diwari, great artist and has been doing good stuff, but recently collaborated with Raftar.
00:16:01
Speaker
So that song has now blown up and collaborations often are things that labels can bring to the table. You will see that say an Anuf Jain collaborated with an AP Dhillon or say an Ed Sheeran collaborates with an Arijeet.
00:16:17
Speaker
A lot of this back-end logistics is coordinated by the label folks. The third thing that a label even today has is a lot of muscle when it comes to pushing and promoting songs on streaming platforms.
00:16:30
Speaker
So If you think of platforms like a Spotify, majority of the songs would come from a T-series or a UMG or my you know Universal and others. So sometimes a label has the ability to request the platform that, hey, I'm giving you all of these big blockbusters, but in turn, why don't you also promote some of my upcoming talent?
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think that is a very good and powerful barter that they are able to do. Lastly, I would say that they are also able to at times get Placements for the artists in terms of placing them at the right festivals.
00:17:03
Speaker
When I signed up with Universal Music in 2008, they were able to get me a lot of shows in the beginning, which sort of got my career kickstarted. They placed me on MTV back then as, you know, on MTV Select or Channel V Artist of the Month.
00:17:17
Speaker
I would have probably not been able to do that. And even today, trying to get an artist a good placement in a big festival or even, let's say, maybe getting a brand on board are things that a label can do.
00:17:31
Speaker
So for labels also, it's equally important to work with artists who are you know that passionate and motivated about their craft. And they also have a roster large artists.
00:17:42
Speaker
So I would say that these three to four areas are where labels can add value to an artist's okay um is there also like you know my knowledge is based on more of hollywood stuff but in most hollywood actors have like an agent who negotiates deals with them so is the same thing here that ah music artists have an agent who does all this work for them and yes there are once an artist becomes I would say, eight by water be banana la um then they are
00:18:16
Speaker
then you require a manager to manage different facets of your work. I first got a manager in 2014 when what had happened was I started doing mashups on YouTube of Hindi and English songs.
00:18:33
Speaker
And many of these mashups started becoming very popular. I started getting a lot of inquiries for live events and concerts. Now, what tends to happen is, say, One out of three inquiries are meaningful and translates into business.
00:18:47
Speaker
Two out of three may not work out for monetary reasons, say the budgets are not matching or their expectation is different. So you start gradually requiring somebody to front all of this. And I've seen that mostly in artists lives, the manager steps in when they start making money. And that is typically after they get their first hit and the live events begin.
00:19:08
Speaker
ah And it's very much needed because I have seen artists who try to manage themselves often get very emotional. They make a mess out of it because they are only the talent. right so everything is then taken very personally and a manager can front it. So just like Hollywood has the agent system.
00:19:26
Speaker
In India, we call it the manager system. I think till about 2020, 21, just as less as four to five years ago. managers were restricted to folks who were only handling the live touring and the live shows business.
00:19:42
Speaker
But today there is a new crop of managers that have come that are actually looking at themselves as a partner in the artist journey rather than just that you 15-20% commission.
00:19:58
Speaker
Today an artist manager ah the good evolved ones, you often see that they have studied music business in schools. They are looking at the artist as a product. And of course, they are also invested creatively in that artist's emotions and journey.
00:20:13
Speaker
And they're also thinking a little 360 that how could I position this artist well? What are the right kind of placements I could get them in festivals and events? How could we make more money from live? How should we price the artist?
00:20:25
Speaker
What kind of collaborations would you know enhance their career? And they're also taking a commission then not just from live, but also the artists recorded you know, revenues from publishing also and some other spaces.
00:20:38
Speaker
So the music ah management space is evolving very rapidly right now. And it's a very, very exciting space. Okay. I guess earlier the labels used to do the non-live part of it. The label in a way was like the manager, the non-live part, the recorded part, the label would be handling it entirely. And you would have a relationship with someone in the music label space.
00:21:01
Speaker
The music labels which were prominent back then in two thousand and six seven are they still prominent today? ah How is the label business, ah has it shaken up after self-publishing?
00:21:14
Speaker
They're still very prominent. I wouldn't say that any of them sort of just fell off. I'll break this down into two parts. One, are they still around and how are they doing? And the second is probably how is their relevance looking as we sort of move forward?
00:21:28
Speaker
Yes, I think almost all the labels that were there when I joined the industry are pretty much still very big. I would say T-Series, Sare Gama, ah folks like TIPS, they're all still very much around Universal Music, Sony Music and so on, Times Music also.
00:21:47
Speaker
And there is a reason for this, Akshay. What actually has happened is that their investments into music acquisition right from, say with the Sare Gama, you could say from the 50s or 60s, they started to buy music read that should look yeah first as HMV and then Sare Gama. So they have a wealth of about five or decades of music that they own.
00:22:08
Speaker
The same is the case with even a T-series, I think from the 90s when Gulshan Kumar entered the industry. From the 90s, they have massive music all the way from 2000s and even up to two thousand and twenty UMG and Sony are a different beast because they have not just a lot of Indian music, they also have the might of all the catalogs from the West.
00:22:29
Speaker
So they are sort of large money. They're probably the largest labels in the world. UMG, Sony and Warner. It's like a trio of three big boys. um So they are all very much around. And what happened was that in India, when the Spotify's and the YouTube's became really big and even an Instagram became big,
00:22:48
Speaker
All of them realize that for me to sustain, i need the music of all of these players. I can't not have a T-Series catalog. I cannot not have a Kishore Kumar collection or a Rafi collection. right So in exchange of this, because these were highly funded and high growth companies, labels managed to squeeze out a huge amount of money as minimum guarantees from all of these platforms, because of which they are extremely cash rich. As in, I would say that the free cash flow in these Labels almost would be about 60 or 70% of their top lines and they're sitting on a lot of disposable cash at any point in time.
00:23:26
Speaker
You may also want to note that many of these folks became production houses, T-series became a production house. Many of them got into this entire space. So they have sustained and thrived.
00:23:39
Speaker
there's a There's also a lot of new entrants that came in India. So there is a French company called Believe that came in. Tech-led became big, became one of those distributors and intermediaries that I spoke of.
00:23:53
Speaker
raised a fair bit of capital, started acquiring catalogs. So in India, they acquired Venus. You would have heard of Venus and they acquired that catalog. They acquired a South catalog as well. Warner Music has made its entry in India in a big way. And now you're seeing newer folks coming in like a pop. Arabia recently introduced pop India and so on.
00:24:12
Speaker
So new folks have come in. Regional labels have become very, very big. They were absolutely unknown, but now you'll see them also having 5 million, 10 million, 20 million subscribers. But yes, going forward in terms of relevance, today when when a new artist comes into the picture, I don't think that they think of a label at all, at least for the first few years.
00:24:33
Speaker
They are very happy to put out their music independently. ah A lot of these songs break out and become very big on YouTube and Spotify. Even these platforms in a way have started shaping their algorithm to favor these independent artists.
00:24:51
Speaker
It works for them very well. One is there is a huge supply on that side. Two, the cloud of the label sort of goes down a little. So they definitely, you will see all of them support the independent artists. So labels right now are at a very interesting or a delicate stage where they are trying to understand, okay, I have this monstrous catalog. It has served me well.
00:25:13
Speaker
How do I scale this? How do i still maintain my relevance? And how do I still exercise control over the music ecosystem? I think for the next five to 10 years, they will still have a lot more control.
00:25:25
Speaker
And eventually then it will, i would say, tilt in in the favor of the independents. So, yeah yeah you know, India is unique in the sense that most music is Bollywood focused.
00:25:39
Speaker
Whereas in West, it is the independent artists. I remember reading a lot about Taylor Swift's battle for... ah the master copy of the first album.
00:25:52
Speaker
um Can you explain what is that master copy? And then you said there is a sound recording copyright and there is a publishing copyright and then there is this master copy battle, which I read about. So, what so you know, in terms of copyrights, who owns the music, who gets to earn from it in perpetuity?
00:26:10
Speaker
What is that like in India today versus what is that like in the West and how has that evolved? Okay, so in this section, then I'll get just a little technical and this will help.
00:26:21
Speaker
So when a song is made, you know, before you get into the recording studio and before you record anything on the microphone also, it begins with the process of a composer sitting with his or her guitar or keyboard.
00:26:34
Speaker
Sometimes there's a lyricist who joins in or two, three people in a room sitting and making a song. and the song gets created in a manner where two fundamental elements components exist. One is the tune or the composition and one is the lyrics.
00:26:50
Speaker
So the law has shaped in such a manner where even before a song is recorded, just the fact that you've put a tune and lyrics in place and you've created a song, that entire bit is given one copyright and that is known as the underlying works.
00:27:06
Speaker
So you've created, let's say today I make a song called I Doonne Ko Zamanne Mea. I have made a tune. I have got a lyricist who came. He wrote the lyrics. Now the song exists in the form of underlying works and a copyright is established with which rests with me, the composer and the lyricist.
00:27:26
Speaker
Now we go into a studio, we call musicians, we sort of orchestrate or arrange the song. We record the instruments. I call, say, Arijeet Singh and Arijeet records the vocals.
00:27:37
Speaker
And now what is created is what is known as a recording okay or a sound recording and in the parlance of the music industry it is also known as the master.
00:27:49
Speaker
okay So that is the master which is ah typically a wave file which is now um you could say depicting that particular song in a recorded format. Now both of these have their own copyright. So there is the sound recording copyright and then there is the underlying box copyright.
00:28:08
Speaker
Now let's say um
00:28:12
Speaker
I wish to create another version of Main Doonne Ko Zamanne Me in a different set of instruments with a different singer. Because and the lyricist are the owners of the underlying works, I have all the freedom to approach different but recording artists to create versions.
00:28:29
Speaker
So you will see in the West, a lot of songs, whether it's the Beatles songs or Coldplay songs, there are a lot of versions that are officially created with new sound recordings with different artists.
00:28:43
Speaker
But then the question arises that each time somebody wants the permission to create these new versions, how many times will they keep reaching out with the composer and the lyricist, right? So to make life easy for them, what entered into the pictures is and entity called the publisher and the publisher said that, hey, I am going to manage your underlying works.
00:29:05
Speaker
And it's my job to try and make as many sound recordings of your song, maybe make it in other languages so that you keep getting money. So the sound records are a publisher.
00:29:17
Speaker
so a publisher So all of the large labels have Sony Music has a publishing division. Universal has a publishing division. In India, Turnkey Music is a publisher. Hooper itself publishes.
00:29:28
Speaker
So we can we sort of control or administer these underlying works. And ah these underlying works and sound recordings are now individually making money for each of the entities.
00:29:39
Speaker
So I'll explain how as well. um In the West, the artists who are really smart, they they did one thing. They kept the publishing rights to themselves. They said that, hey, have written a song or composed.
00:29:53
Speaker
So these rights are mine. At best, I will get a publisher to administer this for me. And the record label which as I said pays for the recording, they gave them those master rights.
00:30:03
Speaker
Saying, chalo, this recording you own. You make all the money that the ah recording will make on radio and selling the CDs and cassettes and so on. But the they smartly kept the publishing rights to themselves or administered by their publisher. In India, unfortunately what happened is because we only had a Bollywood culture,
00:30:24
Speaker
Our entire system was a film producer saying, look, I have engaged as music director in a work for hire kind of a format. You have made these songs my behalf. So I will own the publishing also and the master also.
00:30:39
Speaker
And the music directors gave it away. They looked at themselves more as contractors. They sort of gave it away. they sort of gave it And then the film producer eventually sold it or gave the rights to the label.
00:30:51
Speaker
So you will see that in India, all the labels like Sare Gama, T-series, they own everything. They own the underlying works and they own the sound recording. Whereas in the West, most labels only own the masters and the publishing often was retained by the artist or managed by a publisher. This is a very fundamental difference between the two. And now I'll tell you why.
00:31:13
Speaker
For every hundred rupees a song makes, This is a rough math, but you could say give and take about 87 to 88 rupees are paid to the master.
00:31:25
Speaker
And about 12 to 13 rupees are paid towards the underlying works. So now in the West, because the artist owns the underlying works, it is going to get 100 rupees on 100 rupees. Whereas in India, all of the 100 is sort of kept by the label itself. And the artist really did not get anything from any sales of cassettes, CDs and so on.
00:31:46
Speaker
Unless Akshay De had the clout to negotiate something with the label. that art is very limited. Only Alata Mangeshkar, A.R. Rahman and probably one or two may have been able to tell a label, boss, I will take 20% of all your revenue. But it's very rare.
00:32:05
Speaker
So in India now, yeah. I believe like Amir Khan takes a percentage of the money which a movie makes, but he's the only one who can do that. Everyone else gets a salary. So it's similar.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's exactly. So when I made a man in the time,
00:32:20
Speaker
I was the composer, say somebody wrote the lyrics, we got Arijit Singh to sing. I was paid a fee by the film producer. He told me, yellow, this is your total fee. Ismay you please manage everything.
00:32:32
Speaker
Your job is to give me the final song. I will own the underlying works and the master. And then eventually they gave it to a T-series.
00:32:42
Speaker
So today in that song, while I have composed and made it, the rights completely belong to T-series. Thankfully in India, there is a publishing, there is a copyright society called the IPRS, Indian Performing Rights Society.
00:32:57
Speaker
And they tried to champion the cause of the composer and author. and Today, because of them, you could say that on 100 rupees, eventually the composer and author get about three to four rupees each.
00:33:08
Speaker
So there is something that is now trickling back to them. And prior to that, it was zero. Now in Taylor Swift's case, ah Because the label would have paid for those masters, she would have given the rights to those, to the label.
00:33:25
Speaker
Eventually, the label would have recovered it probably 100x, 200x recover. karlia hoga And today she would be like, hey, listen, I want those masters back. And she has the money to buy it off. So she would have done a deal with them saying, no, I want to own these.
00:33:38
Speaker
It does happen, by the way, sometimes where you sort of buy, it's like a startup founder probably buying his shares back from investors saying today, I want to completely own my startup. It's literally like that.
00:33:49
Speaker
So today she's in full control of her. There's also, by the way, conversely, a lot of the old songwriters are actually selling they're right So you see Pink Floyd, you you willll see Deadmau5, Justin Bieber, many of them have actually sold off their entire publishing rights for like a 300 million or 500 million. They were like, let's move out. So all of these deals are happening in the industry as we speak.
00:34:13
Speaker
Okay. I just want to clarify some terms which are interchangeable. ah Publishing right is the same thing as the right on the underlying work. Yes, the publishing right is basically the right to administer or control or manage the underlying works.
00:34:29
Speaker
That's right. Okay. Okay. And the sound recording right is the same as owning the master copy. Yes. So if I say that I own the publishing or the publishing is 100% with me, then you sort of own the underlying works.
00:34:45
Speaker
Or you would say that I just administer these underlying works. Similarly with sound recording, you If you say that I own the sound recording, then you own the masters. Basically, it's your property. And if you say that, no, I am just sort of handling it, you could administer it for a while.
00:35:01
Speaker
So administering means you take a fees and pass on the revenue to the artists, basically. Yes. Now, if we look at Hooper, now Hooper and Hooper Smash. So on Hooper Smash, we have songs that are created or owned by Yashraj Films, Merchant Records, many other labels and artists.
00:35:20
Speaker
Their sound recordings are made available on the platform for brands to license and use in their reels and so on. So here we have the right to only sort of handle or administer them for a certain use case.
00:35:34
Speaker
The ownership rests with the labels and they have just given us the right to sort of license it for a synchronization purpose. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. So you said 2008, you got a deal with the Universal.
00:35:47
Speaker
ah So that's when you actually started earning a living. like Like before that, you must have been just doing gigs and getting paid something or being called ah to ah like contract as a contract worker in a way, like ah perform the guitar for the song or something like that. Like like how did your journey go?
00:36:04
Speaker
No, no, no. I was a singer. I was not being called by anyone for any sessions work in Mumbai. There are monsters sitting who were incredibly good. So nobody was calling me for anything.
00:36:15
Speaker
In fact, spent money to get my album deal. So on one side, i engaged a very good music producer and I started recording my album. And at that time in 2007, it cost me about eight to ten lakh rupees to make that entire album and so on. I borrowed money from I had some money saved. i had borrowed money from my parents.
00:36:37
Speaker
from my girlfriend at that time who got a job in an investment bank. And everywhere I I have the one girlfriend, I assume. Yes, I cobbled together that money.
00:36:48
Speaker
I also started and approaching a lot of brands and colleges saying, look, I'll do a show for you in as less as 20,000 rupees. I used to make a small loss on every show. So I had very good musicians, but the show was excellent. So while I made a loss, it's like a burn model. ah You know, in the first few years, I was first few months, I was loss making on all the shows, but the quality was good. So I started getting more and more shows.
00:37:15
Speaker
And by the time i approached Universal Music for and for a deal, By the way, before I approached Universal, I was rejected by almost four or five labels, including Times Music, where I did my internship, which came as a huge shock to me. you know It's like I interned there hoping that they will welcome me, but it it doesn't work like that. So I faced a lot of rejections from Times Music, Sony Music.
00:37:39
Speaker
um Then I made this album. I started doing a lot of these shows and I put together an entire kit where, okay, I'm a performing artist. I have a good sounding album.
00:37:49
Speaker
My song College Days ah was also very friendly for college students. So it was a little bit of an understanding of my audience. When I went to Universal Music, I went to them with a good sounding album.
00:38:03
Speaker
The ah two weeks that I spent in Times Music approaching brands also came in really handy because I was approaching a lot of brands requesting them, Kiyaar, I have made a very good album.
00:38:14
Speaker
It is going to be a hit with college students. Can you please fund me? And mostly all said no. But eventually Colgate, Max Fresh said, yes, I think this is a very good song.
00:38:25
Speaker
what will you give me so i gave there was a i told him there's a new platform called youtube that's emerging so i will embed your ad in you know before my video and i will also give you two concerts so they gave me eight lakh rupees back then and the album fell in place i was able to repay some of the folks that i had taken money from uh and uh my career began. So, got lot of fun to get my album deal. It was very tough.
00:38:54
Speaker
ah And then for three years, when i when the album came out, I started doing shows. Gradually, I started earning... This album, and did you did you own the right suit or you sold it to UMG? like umg i I gave it to you UMG.
00:39:09
Speaker
But having said that, there is a probability that... that ah deal was for a certain time period after which the masters come back to me. So right now I'm in that phase where could I get back the masters of that particular album.
00:39:24
Speaker
Having said that, <unk> time with the excitement daily care i want to get ah deal. So umja or be what i would have given a database so I gave it away and they managed me for three years.
00:39:38
Speaker
As I said, they sort of put their muscle behind me to make me visible. That Planet M thing came true that, you know i went to Planet M's, my standee was there, my CDs were there and they got me shows, they got me TV placements.
00:39:50
Speaker
But income, all honestly, Akshay for me really began in 2012, like four years after graduation is when I really started earning money. I think for four years, it was not whatever I got. It was either paid to my fellow musicians or reinvested in making songs.
00:40:08
Speaker
So I had to be very patient for any kind of serious money to come in till about 2012-2013. ah What was the source of the income from twelve thirteen like In 2011, I put out a mashup of a Lionel Richie song and a Mohit Johan song.
00:40:25
Speaker
It's still there on YouTube. And called it synchronicity. And because by this time I had started getting Bollywood films, my circle of musicians had become very professional and my own thought process had evolved a lot.
00:40:39
Speaker
So were getting Bollywood films as a singer. I got in Bollywood as a music director. So of after I did College Days, the album for two, three years, I did shows.
00:40:51
Speaker
I felt that I need to evolve a lot more. I started hanging out with ah folks who are doing Bollywood films and I started studying music a lot more seriously than I ever had. So I started studying the structures of you know why certain songs become big.
00:41:08
Speaker
How are they orchestrated? How are they arranged? How do the singers sing these kind of difficult tunes? I started studying even the craft of songwriting at that point in time. For a brief period, I took a workshop on Western classical.
00:41:22
Speaker
I started studying Hindustani classical, which I went on to study for almost 10 years after that. So I became a very serious musician, I think after 2000. nine or ten. Prior to that, I would say I was that guy from college with a guitar, you know, thinking that, yeah, I started to come and so on.
00:41:40
Speaker
But coming to Mumbai and hanging out with the real cats here, you know, got me deeply excited and I became a student. And then my thing was, OK, how do I back bigger projects? So I started making songs which are sounding more evolved and I started meeting producers, directors.
00:41:57
Speaker
I played them my tunes. The first film I got was a very small project which was produced by Vikram Bhatt. The film is called Lanka and it stars Manoj Bajpayee.
00:42:10
Speaker
A film based in UP, a very hard hitting movie. And I had started getting into Hindustani classical at that point in time. So it was a very beautiful project that came my way.
00:42:21
Speaker
I did two songs in this movie. One was a song based on Raag Charu Keshie, which was sung by Shreya Ghoshal. And one was a song based on Raag Jov, which was sung by KK.
00:42:33
Speaker
And Mera Bhoat level evolved when I was working with all of these musicians and singers. In parallel, I also got a, you could say a fun project directed by Shirish Kundar, starring Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi. This film is called Joker.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I did an item song in that movie which was sung by Sunidhi Chauhan. And it's a very interesting story that Shirish, she told me that, look, I'm not going to pay you anything.
00:43:01
Speaker
But you tell me whichever artist you want, whichever musician you want, I'll pay them. two gu personi bananagar men But I'll give you you want to. So I said, okay, then in that case, my wish list is Sunidhi Chohar. My wish list is that the rhythms be recorded by Ustad Taufik Qureshi and his entire ensemble.
00:43:18
Speaker
He said, done. And we recorded everything at Yashraj Film Studios. I had a rhythm section of 15 people. Those experiences made me rapidly gallop as a musician. Like suddenly I was working with the best and the finest folks. But the one thing that had happened in this period was...
00:43:38
Speaker
All the action has shifted to other musicians and I was not in the front. Like I was not singing. College Days, the album that I did, all my fans were there for me. so me underric There was this thing that yeah I need to also sing something. I can't just stop being the front man.
00:43:55
Speaker
So I created a band called Synchronicity and I started making mashups of English and Hindi songs. And luckily, the first mashup only went viral in 2011 and We're talking 13 years ago. So at that time, these mashups and all were a very rare concept.
00:44:12
Speaker
And immediately I started getting calls for events um that Mr. Anil Agarwal of the Vedanta group has a large event. He would like you to perform in that event. or And these were all very sophisticated ah folks because they could see my background that this guy's from IIM Ahmedabad, sings in Hindi, English, doing movies.
00:44:31
Speaker
And I started getting paid a few lakh rupees per show. So for me, it was like, okay, with music direction, I am satisfying my joy of making films, working with the likes of a sooneniga sonili sharea ah But my cash flow is coming from all of these events that I'm doing.
00:44:49
Speaker
at you know it could be even shadi shows km and iffa large for large folks. I did large corporate shows for folks like Standard Chartered and we may not realize but yea events, Akshay's happen throughout the year in India and it's a good source of income because I was a singer.
00:45:06
Speaker
So yeah, it took me at least 2012 2013 to get to that stage where, okay, this is coming. At that time, my in-laws also said, let's go, the girl in the room.
00:45:20
Speaker
So I got married also in 2014. So those are fun years. Those are great years where I was enjoying my film work, my mashups, and also my live events.
00:45:32
Speaker
I want to ask you a couple of things. What is the ah difference between a music director, a composer? ah like if Just help me understand these roles when you are making a song.
00:45:47
Speaker
Sure. See, a composer is somebody who is essentially going to craft or compose the melody or the tune. For example, you know if I make a song like, ah
00:46:04
Speaker
let's say,
00:46:09
Speaker
so deca
00:46:16
Speaker
Something like that. okay Now this has a tune. la la la la a la So as a composer, it's my job to craft out this entire tune of the song.
00:46:29
Speaker
Now this tune is incomplete without some lyrics in it. ah Now if I just do it may not trigger that emotion but if I put in some lyrics, give yeah vo he just updicate pivo niharjo dilpebanet you know now I know that it's coming together as a song.
00:46:51
Speaker
yeahvo a joseph baodi like so a composer sits with alyricus typically And they both together craft out the song.
00:47:02
Speaker
So you will see right from the olden times, whether it's a Shankar Jaikishan and a Shalendra or let's say R.D. Burman and Anand Bakshi, they would be sitting and jamming like this and creating the song.
00:47:14
Speaker
Gaana ban gaya, underlying works tayyaar ho gae. Now you want to go to the studio and record it. Here is where the composer in most cases steps up and starts recording. recruiting some musicians, arrangers and says that, okay, now I want to, my vision is that the song starts with a particular set of violins or a guitar strum or a guitar riff, then goes into X, and Z. So he's giving the musical direction and he's recruiting different types of technicians for fulfilling his vision.
00:47:44
Speaker
Just like in a film, a director is roping in a cameraman, editor, lights person, makeup artist, you know, all of those music directors to fulfill his vision. In India, a music director recruits multiple different people like arrangers, instrumentalists and so on, and even singers.
00:48:03
Speaker
And then the sound recording is made. So in India, music director typically refers to the person who has not just made the tune, not the composition, but has also write till the end, worked on every phase and given the final product.
00:48:19
Speaker
A lyricist is somebody who writes the lyrics. um Over the last 8 to 10 years, a new definition called music producer has emerged where many a times what happens is suppose I make this tune that now when I want to make the sound recording, I go to a specialist and tell him that, yeah, I have made this song. Why don't you put the music together for this entire bit?
00:48:49
Speaker
And you could say then in that case, I'm a product manager and he's the CTO sort of a thing where I give him the entire PRD and the definition and he sits in or you know alone or with the team writes the code.
00:49:01
Speaker
So those folks are folks working on a laptop today. They are the ones actually playing out the music and they call themselves music producers. The playback singer typically is in India, a person who comes is given that this is the song, they go behind the mic and they sing it.
00:49:20
Speaker
They are often not seen in front of the screen right from the times of a Lata, Mangeshkar, Rafi, Kishore, all the way to even an Arijit Singh in a way, they have been playback singers.
00:49:32
Speaker
And then finally what happens is when all the instruments are recorded, the singer has recorded the vocals, There is a certain engineering component that comes to make all of these different instruments sound cohesive.
00:49:45
Speaker
It should sound, you could say, similar on different sets of speakers. It shouldn't be, kahipe so neither it's jumping out. That entire technical process is called mixing and mastering.
00:49:59
Speaker
And there are engineers, recording engineers or sound engineers, sorry, who are specialized in mixing and mastering. The music director has to understand all the different touch points, right from composing the song, working with lyricists, recording the instruments, recording the singers, working with the mixing mastering engineer and the music and director also has to understand the nuances of working with a film director, understanding their vision. So it's a complicated role.
00:50:27
Speaker
Many people think that, oh, easy hands, just tune composing, but Again, because a lot of startup folks will be watching it, just like a founder has to work not just with his team members, but also a board, manage the stakeholder investor expectations. Similarly, a music director has to manage the film director's expectations, the producer's expectations and work within budget timeframes and provide quality.
00:50:52
Speaker
so varka analogy here It's a very difficult role. And I would say that in India, folks like Apreetam, Vishal Shekhar, Amit Rivedi, Sachin Jigar, who excel at this. They're very good at it.
00:51:04
Speaker
Multiple films are going on at the same time. One more thing I would say, Akshay, is that the music director's role is very challenging in the context of a film because in a film, every film's texture can be very different.
00:51:16
Speaker
The story can be different. And you have to be able to have the diversity or the breadth, range to make a Kawaali, you know, an independent song or a classical song.
00:51:29
Speaker
When you are an independent artist, you have all the freedom to do what you want. You're not managing anyone's expectations and you can stick to one sound and do very well with it. But say somebody like a Shankarai sound lawyer will have to make a Kajarare also. They may have to make a Lakshar also, a Wake Up Sid also. you know So there is a lot of pull that happens as per the demand of the film and the story.
00:51:52
Speaker
Just lastly, for the viewers, there is also another aspect of cinema which requires music, which is the background score. And many times the music director who makes the song may not be the same person as the one who does the background scores.
00:52:08
Speaker
Background scores are very technical. They require extreme knowledge of storytelling, cinema, and also timelines. And there are experts in the industry who are just incredibly proficient at the art of doing background scores.
00:52:25
Speaker
I would say one of the people who do both very beautifully is Mr. A.R. Rahman. But most others, they have the film, the songs will be done by say, Preetam and the background score will be done by somebody else.
00:52:39
Speaker
So that's how the different nuances of the music industry are shaped. yeah Interesting. so Typically, a composer and a music director is the same person ah in most cases. In most cases, yes.
00:52:50
Speaker
Okay, okay. But this music director is an Indian beast, right? I don't think such a concept exists in the West. Typically, the artist in the West is also the composer or they work with a music producer, um something like that, right? I believe Justin Timberlake has this long-time collaboration with some producer. I forget the name, but...
00:53:12
Speaker
ah So, and a producer is more of a software guy? Today, yes. I think till the early 2000s, he was a studio guy working with real musicians. But post the workstations coming in, a music producer today is a software guy. And yes, you're right that there an artist works with a music producer.
00:53:31
Speaker
They have the term musical director, which often refers to folks who are... you know, orchestrating for a Broadway or something like that, where you sort of direct the music. But yes, this music director is a very Indian, you could say, phenomena.
00:53:47
Speaker
Very rare. So, why were you not ah ah feeling like ah music directors don't have fame? and Music directors have a lot of fame, right? Like, like why why did you...
00:54:00
Speaker
want to also be the front face and ah have your own band in addition to being I mean, why not just double down and focus on being a music director? I would have done that. I think had I not been a singer, because I started my career singing all the songs of college days, I also performed them live on stage for three years. So there was and a strong aspect of singing, performing live and connecting directly with fans.
00:54:25
Speaker
ah Had i not been... introduced to this, maybe I would have been very happy doing music direction because it's very satisfying and it's lovely to do that only. But because I had done this and there is a certain euphoria and a joy that you experience when you are performing live to people. There high that you get, I'm sure. There is a high that you get. They they love your voice.
00:54:45
Speaker
Plus, because i had done this, i used to keep getting messages saying, why aren't you singing? You know, i we saw your song with Shreya Ghoshal or whatever, but yeah, why are you not singing? So I had to do it for my own joy and satisfaction.
00:55:00
Speaker
was also there clearly is a demand. So I had to do that. um I think that those are the only two reasons, not not for any, you know, Kiara, I was not enjoying music direction. So i felt I need to be more famous or anything. I think it was just to fulfill a certain part in me which wanted to connect to my listeners.
00:55:21
Speaker
Typically, like say a top tier talent would, I'm sure, be earning directly from Bollywood, but mid-tier talent typically earns more from events, like you mentioned earlier.
00:55:31
Speaker
Various kind of shadi, corporate events, those that's where the bulk of the cash flow comes for mid-tier talent? I think that is where the bulk of the cash flow comes for all tiers.
00:55:43
Speaker
Even whether it's a Sononega, Mariji, Chreya or mid-tier, 80-90% of the income Akshay comes from live events only. Because that's a very, very stable form of shows. In fact, today, I think most playback singers don't care about what they are paid to sing a song for a movie.
00:56:00
Speaker
They may even do it for free. You may have read Arijit's recent interview where he says that I don't charge anything really for singing a song. But for his concert, I was aware that he was charging 2 to 4 crore. I recently read an article where he's charging probably 14 crore or something like that.
00:56:17
Speaker
But i'm I'm aware that folks like Sonu Nigam may be anywhere in the range of 1.2 to crore a show, doing easily between shows a year. Salim Suleiman, most others, even any singer you take ah would be doing 50 to 100 shows a year.
00:56:35
Speaker
And that's where the bulk of the income comes for them. I think the money they would be getting from as fees for singing songs would be peanuts compared to that.
00:56:47
Speaker
Even in my experience, when I did movies, not a single large singer ever stressed about how much They are paying me. Shan once sang for me for 50,000. I remember once Shreya, I paid her only some 40,000. And they didn't care. They were like, yeah we love the song. upjodo I have no problem.
00:57:08
Speaker
And even an Arijit saying, very affordable folks. Now, of course, many of them have become selective. They may charge more. But otherwise, fundamentally, 80 to 90 percent income live events. say yeah yeah For music directors now, because of the IPR is coming in, I would say that probably, you know let's say music directors who don't perform as singers, for them,
00:57:33
Speaker
some money would be coming in from their fees as music directors. And they also get a good, you know, sum of money from the IPRS as royalties. So probably for them, it would be 40 to 50% from their fees and royalties and about 50% of the shows. Right. Yeah. I think if a director does perform also, they have to. Yes. Okay.
00:57:58
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Very interesting. um yeah Do you need ah some sort of copyright approval to perform a song? like Like you said, the for a playback singer, ah they don't earn from ah singing and recording, but they earn from live performance. So that song which they're doing live, they will probably not own the right to it. but Do they need any approval or it's like an informal arrangement or something like that?
00:58:29
Speaker
they do not need any approval as such, but the organizers of the event, they have to procure a certain set of licenses, which is mandatory by law. So there are three sets of licenses that you need to procure when you're doing live events.
00:58:44
Speaker
The first is, and again, because we discussed this, when a singer is performing live, say Arijit Singh is doing a concert and he's singing the song, say, Chalea or Hawaeng.
00:58:58
Speaker
So he is singing the underlying, he's performing those underlying works. So the first license you need to get is the license from the IPRS, which controls these, you know which gives you the license to use the underlying works anywhere. So you have to mandatorily get the IPRS license.
00:59:17
Speaker
In cases where you are also performing the sound recording, say you're a DJ and you're performing, you know, you're playing the latest hit song, say, Shaky Shaky Bajaare Howa, you will need to get the license to play the sound recording as well as the underlying books.
00:59:32
Speaker
So you will have to get the IPRS license. And you also have to get the sound recording license. Now to get the sound recording license in India, there are two bodies primarily. The first is a body called the PPL, which gives you licenses for about 60-70% of the labels.
00:59:49
Speaker
And then there is another society called Novex that represents the remaining 40% of the label. So you have to get three licenses. Typically, if you are having a wedding, say in your family and DJ Bula Raya, you'll have to get PPL, Novex and IPRS.
01:00:05
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. And are these licenses expensive? or What does it cost typically? No, they are not super expensive. they i think start, I'm not sure their tariffs are, thankfully, all of them have their tariffs mentioned very clearly on their platform. So take my numbers with a pinch of salt, but anywhere between 30,000 to maybe a lakh, depending upon the size of the event. So it could be a ticketed event, non-ticketed event,
01:00:33
Speaker
It could be an event in a tier one city versus say a smaller town. it Is it in a five star? Is it on a certain occasion like New Year's Day? Are you playing the live music in a mall or a salon?
01:00:45
Speaker
ah You know, and the size of the establishment also matters. So they have very clear tariffs and you have to get it. I think people what people don't realize is that and I have seen a lot of resistance from people. What do you think?
01:01:02
Speaker
I have already paid the DJ, so why am I paying? But what we don't understand is that just the way you've paid um the caterer for a Gulab Jamun or you've paid the decor guy for the flowers and so on, the music is helping your ambience or it's enhancing the quality of your event.
01:01:21
Speaker
Yes, where people have a bit of a problem is I've already paid the DJ, but the DJ is playing songs that belong to other folks. So someone has to pay them. What currently is the lack of awareness in the market is that they feel that the DJ comes bundled with the rights to play, which it doesn't. So the DJ is paid only for his services or the singer is paid only for their services to sing.
01:01:43
Speaker
But the the the permission or the license to use all of those underlying works or any sound recording have to be procured from these. societies. And that is, I think, a broad awareness which has to be created by these societies even who are doing this. So, yeah, that exists in the market. There's 30,000 to 1 lakh for a single song or for a bunch of songs?
01:02:05
Speaker
No, the entire event. So, and Look, again, as I said, the actual numbers may be different, but I believe it starts as low as 15,000, 20,000, all the way to maybe one or two lakhs, depending upon the size of the event.
01:02:18
Speaker
ah But these are blanket ah licenses, Akshay, where suppose you are having a party. Any song. Yes, because you may not know the song a DJ might play, right? He might just play 50 songs. So you've taken blanket licenses and now you have the freedom to sort of perform whatever. how do these societies split up the money then?
01:02:40
Speaker
ah How will they know which songs were played? Because they have to pass on the revenue. Yes. So, the traditional way has been to sort of synchronize it with... They have hundreds of different touch points that they get data from. From radio, from streaming, from multiple even live events.
01:03:01
Speaker
What is the sequence of songs played? And this is that because there exist millions of songs, there is a certain... ah you could say estimation that they make. Even nowadays they have all invested in softwares and tech teams trying to understand what would be a reasonable allocation because it's physically impossible to track every song in every event.
01:03:21
Speaker
So it bases a certain ah mathematics that they have tried to create or certain model that they have tried to build from all of these different touch points. um There is a certain level of investment happening world over in trying to have hardware or ah tools that tell you exactly what was played in an establishment and so on. And it's very slowly and steadily happening.
01:03:45
Speaker
of Possibly it may happen in a decade all over where every shop will have to have it and so on. So currently, I think these are models created by them. ah and it's challenging when I think of their models. I think it must be a very challenging affair to sort of distribute revenues across all of these to thousands of artists that might be there. how ah How strictly are these copyrights enforced?
01:04:14
Speaker
and Like ah you said, most people would hesitate to spend that extra money in a shadi. Is there any fear? ah Is there a stake here to make people spend to get the rights or is it voluntary?
01:04:30
Speaker
I think till about 2016-17, the awareness was extremely low. And i I sort of know this because we've been working closely with the IPRS. I have been a member of the IPRS as a composer for the last 14 years. So the challenge was people who were refusing to pay.
01:04:48
Speaker
ah There was a lot of resistance from property owners of say malls or even clubs that, na are i I'm paying the artist, why should I pay you and so on and so forth. But ah one, I think there has been a lot of effort put in by the IPRS, particularly Javed Akhtar sahab and even Mr. Rakesh Nigam who heads the IPRS.
01:05:08
Speaker
Javed sahab is particularly tirelessly crusaded for copyrights to be enforced. And I think in 2014, the entire copyright law got amended to first give the rights to the composer ah composers and authors to receive royalty.
01:05:24
Speaker
Basis that strength, I think they increased the feet on the street and they started sending people to multiple to build different establishments.
01:05:33
Speaker
Initially, I know that even with Hooper, we face this thing that pelear is ajanavata and then if you don't, then sometimes you have to tell them that, hey, it's a law, right? and That's typically when people part with the money saying, okay, chalo.
01:05:45
Speaker
um But one thing that they've done over the last, I would say, six to eight years is having multiple people in different cities creating strong relationships with the venues. So today, if let's say I have a private function in a Taj or a St. Regis.
01:06:01
Speaker
The hotel staff will tell me that you have to mandatorily take this. Otherwise, this event cannot happen. ah Because otherwise they could more of all under the radar. Like recently I helped a friend organize a concert at the Royal Opera House.
01:06:14
Speaker
And one of the absolutely mandatory things from the Royal Opera House apart from things like say or ah you know fire services or an ambulance was also the licenses.
01:06:27
Speaker
Like if we don't do any people, won't do any concert. So they had to buy the licenses. And ah same for now a lot of venues. I think A very smart thing could be to make these venues as your partners, right where it's in their interest to also enforce.
01:06:42
Speaker
um So I think most of these bodies have grown um in the last two to three years or five years where clearly they have done something right.
01:06:53
Speaker
Just look at the IPRS. I think they were at probably about 40 to 50 crore in collection three to four years ago. I think they have finished FI25 at about 780 crore. it's jumped more than 15x.
01:07:07
Speaker
And as members of the IPRS, we see a direct connect with the amount of money we receive. So ah they are doing something right. But I think we are at the tip of the iceberg.
01:07:19
Speaker
I can tell you this because we are in a similar business of you know, licensing, only differences, we operate in the digital space. But you have to really work hard and it's also a very patient effort.
01:07:32
Speaker
You can't hold somebody's neck and do it. You have to trigger something in them saying, no, this is mandatory. It's a lot like combating software piracy basically.
01:07:43
Speaker
Exactly. Like a mix of education and sending legal notices and things like that. Yes. So it it takes time to sort of show results. You have to be very patient. But eventually you see that once the clients or the other party starts paying, then they don't stop paying. Like recently I was meeting...
01:08:04
Speaker
the owner of a chain of restaurants and they pay now. They pay the IPRS and the PPL and OX. Yes, what may happen is they may request and negotiate a little. Okay, yeah I've got 20 chains. Come on, let's do something better. kdo That is fine.
01:08:18
Speaker
Right. But at least the habit first of getting them to pay is what these societies have done. The music which streams in restaurants, ah do they not use some service or do they just play a Spotify playlist?
01:08:32
Speaker
They're not allowed to actually. But sadly, many restaurants that you go to, you will you'll see that they are either plugging in their speakers into a Spotify or a YouTube. ah In many cases, what may happen is they may have procured the requisite licenses because it's very unlikely today that a big restaurant opens in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and the IPRS will not come. It's very unlikely because they have enough feed on the street.
01:08:58
Speaker
So, Bangalore, say you have started a restaurant. First few days you played music, IPRS, PPL, Novex knocked on your door. You said, let's negotiate little bit. You closed it. You bought the ah blanket license.
01:09:10
Speaker
But now, what do you use to play the music? So that is where probably still using playlists of Spotify and YouTube is a more convenient option. So it may be wrong to assume that just because somebody is using a Spotify playlist plugging into the speakers, they may not have purchased the licenses. It may be more of a convenience thing as well.
01:09:31
Speaker
But in in most cases, I know because it's still a growing market. The IPRS had done a survey and I think even it matches with Hooper's numbers that the compliance is probably in the range of 1-2% right now.
01:09:44
Speaker
So, you know, that gives some idea that most cases... Any ah public venue which is playing music is supposed to get the license. 100%. Absolutely.
01:09:55
Speaker
find What about for a private party at my home? In your home... Again, the best solution will be checking out these platforms itself. But i think there is a certain minimum number that is used to define what is a gathering, I think.
01:10:12
Speaker
I think if it crosses that number, then it is sort of considered to be a commercial event. For example, you could have a massive Sangeet, at your home, say in Delhi, I myself have done shows where hundreds of people are in the backyard or the garden of you know the businessman. Now they have to procure the license.
01:10:31
Speaker
I think they have used some kind of metrics, but again, I'm not the best. Got it. Okay. nice but not So I want to put that 780 crore number in some context. You said IPRS generated 780 crores of revenue.
01:10:45
Speaker
ah what are the, what is the TAM for music? Like how much comes from YouTube? How much comes from Spotify for this industry? How much comes from, what are the different ways in which this industry is earning?
01:10:58
Speaker
This industry is earning from, yeah, yeah let's break it down into three areas where the industry is earning and one area where probably the industry is not earning where we come in. So the first large area where the music industry relies on is YouTube. um Typically in India, one to three paise, maybe four paise per stream is what they get.
01:11:24
Speaker
um If the music industry is right now, let's say in the range of 3,500 to 4,500, say 4,000 crore, ah it would be fair to say that YouTube is probably contributing close to half of that.
01:11:41
Speaker
But again, i may or may not be super accurate. We need to check with individual labels. Nobody really breaks down their numbers, but YouTube is one of the biggest sources of revenue. The second large source of revenue is audio streaming platforms.
01:11:54
Speaker
um Out of those, the two big ones are Spotify and Apple Music. Unfortunately, in India, some of the streaming platforms did not sustain and survive. Ghana, for example, or Wink.
01:12:07
Speaker
and more recently, Hungama. They were not able to compete. um But there is enough ah revenue coming in from all of these sources. The third large source now that is coming in is becoming the IPRS, PPL, and Novex.
01:12:21
Speaker
So for a lot of these labels, the revenue from royalties collected from the public performance or live users of their music is becoming a large source of revenue. The fourth revenue stream that is now coming in is synchronization both in a micro and macro space.
01:12:39
Speaker
So micro licensing is the usage of ah track in a digital format. When a brand like a Zepto or a Myntra creates a reel and is synchronizing some music with a visual ah to sell products, that is a very big source of income. Typically that revenue does not come to them from the deals they have done with social media platforms and so on.
01:13:03
Speaker
oh So micro sync and even macro sync where a song may be used in the context of television or a film show, ah a film or a web show is synchronization. So that is the fourth source of revenue.
01:13:18
Speaker
ah The whole, the entire size of the Indian music industry in terms of recorded revenues, I'm not talking about live ah performances, is in that range of four to five thousand crores. So that is where we are at. We are less than a billion ah dollars right now.
01:13:33
Speaker
And that is exactly where all the record labels folks like us are trying to figure out how can we just sort of increase the size of the pile. So this ah sounds very small, right? 4,000 to 5,000 crore. India is such a massive market. What is the ah Bollywood market like?
01:13:50
Speaker
ah how much do How much does the film industry make as a whole? Oh, we should check these numbers. I myself haven't seen them in a little while. ah My problem with the music industry and the reason why I feel this industry will be or rather is struggling and is much smaller is that in the last 10 odd years, the unit economics have been completely wiped out from this industry.
01:14:18
Speaker
There was a time when the cassettes and CDs were sold that it was a straightforward interaction between the end customer and the producer of the music.
01:14:30
Speaker
This is like any other product, you know, let's say if we rewind the time when we were in school or college, we liked a certain album, we discovered it maybe on the radio or television and so on. And then we went to the music store and bought our favorite CDs and cassettes.
01:14:47
Speaker
ah Then came an era of piracy, I think around about 2003 when Napster came and then all the way till about 2010, 2009, 2010, when people completely stopped buying any kind of physical products.
01:15:00
Speaker
ah right In 2008 or 2009 was the fag end of the Siri era. Post that, there was a there was no intermediate gap. There was straight up straight up a transition between that and the tech giants that came in from ah YouTube to a Spotify, where ah
01:15:20
Speaker
It is a subscription model. You pay something and you will you can listen to anything and everything you want to. Right. So unfortunately, the unit economics went away completely. Labels that previously had the might of distribution and an ability to advertise and sell products now suddenly became B2B companies where, OK, if I have to make money as a label, I just need to have a great deal with the YouTube or a Spotify.
01:15:45
Speaker
ah I have completely lost my ability to sell anything to the end consumer. So the only way for me to you know make money is to exercise my clout as a label, go to a YouTube, Spotify and say that if you don't pay me my 100, 200, 300 crore a year, I will not put my catalog.
01:16:03
Speaker
By the way, as the platform started becoming bigger and bigger, the labels also started losing out on their cloud because tomorrow, if I as a label threaten a YouTube that, hey, if you don't pay me 300 crore, I will pull off my catalog from YouTube.
01:16:20
Speaker
What if YouTube says, OK, you know what, just go ahead and pull it off. ah You know, no label today wants to not be on a YouTube or a Spotify. So what started happening was in the beginning, there was a sugar rush where, you know, they started getting a lot of money from platforms that has started to sort of taper down a little bit.
01:16:40
Speaker
Where the industry has found itself is a space where one, they are not directly connected to their end consumers now. Apart from maybe a channel on YouTube where they have subscribers and sure, they could probably get three paise, four paise or whatever it is that has also historically kept coming down.
01:16:58
Speaker
YouTube do earlier, which was paying 10 paise per stream in India, today barely pays about one to two paise a stream. The payout per stream is not in your hands. YouTube will say, look, I've got 20 other forms of content. I've got standup comedy, cartoons, sports. was you know You will end up getting what my algorithm decides or what advertisers are willing to pay.
01:17:19
Speaker
The same for a Spotify. 2021, when we were distributing songs, we were getting paid about seven paise for audio distribution. It's probably now gone down to three or three and a half paise.
01:17:31
Speaker
So the music industry has... for the lack of a better word, now found itself just a little clueless as to how do we sell directly. ah And now you are sort of limited to what your B2B partners are willing to sort of shell And this is going to further get complicated now that ai has come in and AI is creating songs and and so on its own. You'll find a lot of labels a little shaken or disturbed saying, hey, where where do we go?
01:17:56
Speaker
Even independent artists for that matter. Why Hooper has found backers in this entire ecosystem is because what we are what we are trying to sell is a license to brands and influencers with a simple model that instead of a platform being made responsible for this payment, the person who uses the music to create content should be paying for it.
01:18:19
Speaker
And I think somewhere that has found great resonance with the labels who again want to get back to the model where like yeah you listen to something, you pay for it. And there should be some unit economics to this entire thing. So with us, it's simple if we charge, let's say, 100 rupees for a micro sync, the end user, which is the influencer or a brand is paying for it.
01:18:39
Speaker
We split, let's say, 50 or 60 rupees with the label or the artist and we keep the rest as platform commission. It is a simple model. So I think that the music industry has struggled in creating a good model for itself and which is why we are all paying the price of now having to wake up and sort of smell the coffee.
01:19:01
Speaker
So you are at Hooper essentially monetizing the creator economy for the music industry. ah like a headline of what Hooper does would be something like that, like allowing creators to use ah music in a licensed banner for their reels or whatever videos that they are uploading.
01:19:23
Speaker
Mostly for ah reels in the scope of branded content. Because reels otherwise on Instagram as a user generated content currently is a free model where labels have done deals and anyone can just pick up a piece of music and create a reel. But yes, in the context of commercial or branded content that is there on YouTube, anyone who's creating a long format YouTube video is using a license for a track that they're purchasing from But not for YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts, again, YouTube has done a deal with the labels.
01:19:56
Speaker
YouTube Shorts also, if it is branded content, they're buying licenses from Hooper Smash. Okay. So, the Instagram, YouTube, ah it's in their interest to have user-generated content. So, they don't want to put friction for people.
01:20:11
Speaker
Therefore, unless it's a brand, ah yeah Instagram is paying the label something... ah some paisa for you to use their music on your reel?
01:20:24
Speaker
Instagram is paying all the large 15-20 labels a yearly fee for allowing them to put up their music for unlimited usage by their users. You absolutely identified it correctly. They want minimal friction and they know that the labels together would constitute 60-70% of all the popular songs. So they would now by paying an upfront fee, make that available.
01:20:48
Speaker
The sad part over here is that the large part of the independent artists get sold for peanuts because they are not getting paid anything by Instagram, but their music is available for being used.
01:20:59
Speaker
Under the, I would say,
01:21:04
Speaker
you could say the only thing that the artist gets in return is a promise of being discovered, saying that, look, if you don't have your music on Instagram, but People will not make reels on it So today, even if I'm not paying you anything, you should have your music on my platform for free because tomorrow 100,000 or 500,000 reels could be made and you know you could get your shows.
01:21:26
Speaker
As an artist who has been there, you know as an independent, I would say that artists will take that deal. It's a long way away from Instagram probably paying for every single track or again Instagram telling its users that look I have paid enough for on behalf of you guys and possibly now you should start shelling out maybe thousand rupees a year or two thousand to access this library unlimited.
01:21:52
Speaker
If that happens, if the music industry is able to let go of its short term greed of getting those minimum guarantees. And if all the labels unite and tell an Instagram that, look, your users are having a blast over here. They're creating reels endlessly.
01:22:08
Speaker
And there are, as per the last stat I saw, there are probably some 30, 40 million reels made daily in India alone, which shows that people love making it. Now, if for this entire function of being able to make unlimited reels, a user, end user pays about a thousand rupees the music industry will be in a very, very different place. But again, for that, the industry needs to be cohesive.
01:22:34
Speaker
And that is tough. Because today, one label gets a large offering from an Insta. They'll say, you know what, I've got my money. So yeah, I'm out. And that is where it's like everyone looking for themselves has led to the industry short selling itself as an industry.
01:22:51
Speaker
So why did you make the switch from being a music director, being a creator to... being a founder of Hooper?
01:23:02
Speaker
By 2015 or 16, I had I think 16, I had started feeling that, okay, I have been doing music for the past you know, eight odd years. My album came in 2008. So it was eight odd years of creating music as an individual.
01:23:22
Speaker
i started feeling that there is something more to me and probably my purpose is a little different in life. Like I have to build something for this ecosystem.
01:23:33
Speaker
2015, I think, I started with my own. That I was using YouTube, i was using you know distribution services and I felt that why can't I build something like this given my background of engineering, my MBA and now my investment of seven, eight, nine years in this industry where I deeply understand every facet of this space.
01:23:54
Speaker
But I did not have the thrust or the push to take it seriously. So many people used to meet me. I remember back then that you join us as a founder and I used to just say name.
01:24:05
Speaker
I think 2016, I met some of my batch mates who had started creating businesses basis their passion. So Anshu Sharma, I remember he had just built Magic Pin back then. and And many of us saw the app and we were very fascinated because this entire bit of local and hyperlocal stuff was something I had not heard of.
01:24:27
Speaker
But Anshu seemed very passionate about it. Ashneer was getting into the space of FinTech and so on. so There was this thing that, we are yes, your passion can be converted into a business.
01:24:40
Speaker
Even then, it took me almost a year and a half or two years more. 2018, when I started G-Sharp Media, I said, OK, I need to start a business. And it was not a tech play at all. Initially, I started, you could say, an agency or a services business where I offered brand solutions, ah you know, where songs would be placed in large brand campaigns.
01:25:05
Speaker
And I also collated about 100 odd artists and told them, look, you have original songs. You are struggling to pitch them to producers and brands. I am one of those slightly enterprising guys who goes and meets multiple people. Why don't I take our entire bank and go out and pitch it to different folks?
01:25:23
Speaker
So essentially what Hooper does today in a... platform-led manner, I had started doing it in an offline manner and I got a good amount of success in those years. That business was Songfest.
01:25:35
Speaker
Even when I started Songfest, I went and met folks like Anshu, Ashneer and told them you know that my business starts. And many of them helped me with fundamentals of what a business is because I was so far removed from it, Akshay, as a music director that I needed help and guidance to just understand what is P&L and how do hire people and so on.
01:25:55
Speaker
hire people and so on I think that the desire to build a tech led started coming in even stronger when I met Meghna. So Meghna had worked, my co-founder Meghna had worked in a startup called Hubilo as a founding team member. And that was an event tech company, still is.
01:26:13
Speaker
She had the ability to build products and deeply understood the ah processes it takes to build products, working with engineers, right from the say UI UX, and vp when i get so on.
01:26:27
Speaker
I think when I met her, everything transitioned.
Impact of COVID-19 on Music Licensing
01:26:31
Speaker
If she knows the mechanics of it, I know the the vision. Now we could possibly do this together. of And that sort of crystallized post-COVID in 2021.
01:26:43
Speaker
ah During COVID, what turned out to be a huge, huge accelerator for us, two, three things happened in the same span, you know, timeframe. The first was Instagram introduced Reels in 2020 and a lot of brands by then, which were TikTok baby ha in India till it got banned, started creating digital videos on Instagram.
01:27:03
Speaker
ah We found a lot of our songs being used by brands without our commission, no credit, no payment. And i particularly as an artist was deeply irritated with that because otherwise I was used to being paid for all of this.
01:27:16
Speaker
When we spoke to the brands, they said, nahe you know, These are digital reels and I cannot pay you 5 lakh and 10 lakh for it. I i don't know. you know but It's just very small budget thing.
01:27:29
Speaker
I will not name the brand because they are a client now, but one such brand kisar mera kafi who i come and paid together along giub because they had used one of my tracks in almost six to seven different ah videos that they made and at one time they had also used language like chalo khadlo jo khadna hai and so on and I actually i told them that in that case I will take you on because boss I'm also an educated guy I'm a se chhodong ba nahi finally they paid me 50,000 rupees and they deleted those videos after three months if he just gave us the rights to use it for three more months delete kardengesko
01:28:06
Speaker
wasa boa In parallel, we were also working at Songfest with a lot of creators who were using music. They were getting copyright claims. Sometimes informal discussions with them. They used to share that I'm looking to use an epidemic sound.
01:28:19
Speaker
You know, upload the licenses for it. So lot of things started. Epidemic sound. I think people outside the industry don't know about epidemic. That's also like a pretty... disruptive startup, right?
01:28:31
Speaker
Yes, it is a disruptive startup. it's a It's a Swedish company and they are probably the largest music licensing startup in the world today, where they have a huge bank of 50 or 1000 songs, very high quality.
01:28:46
Speaker
And they provide micro licenses for usage of these songs in YouTube videos, Instagram, And probably some of the largest creators in the world use that platform. The challenge was and still is that folks like them do not have any local or hyperlocal music as far as the Indian market is concerned.
01:29:03
Speaker
And I think over the last few years... but in Epidemic has like branded tier one songs or it has like a guitar strum for the background of a video or something like that.
01:29:18
Speaker
It does not have tier one songs by well-known artists, but it does have songs with which sound very good like a pop song. So they've got a lot of songs with vocals in it, high quality background scores. They've got stuff like the guitar example you mentioned. So their library is in fact very good, but it's just that ah it doesn't have any famous. You won't find like a Coldplay or anyone there.
01:29:42
Speaker
But they are disruptive because prior to Epidemic Sound, the model was always a pay per track model. Epidemic raised funds and close to 300-400 million dollars and they built a library of their own and they they started moving to a subscription model. So they changed the industry in that sense.
01:30:04
Speaker
um We did the same thing for the Indian market simply because we realized that this is an underserved Indian creators are not able to find the kind of music that they want on Epidemic. we Before even building Hooper, writing one line of code, we met about 150 to creators and close to 40-50 brands to understand that if we build this, are they really going to buy?
01:30:29
Speaker
And we realized that they will buy only we serve the need of that Indian element. So in a way, we have focused on serving the Indian market. We also followed the epidemic model where Hooper, of course, has a tech platform, but underneath it is a huge library of music that we own, both the underlying works and the masters.
01:30:49
Speaker
So we are also in a way, you could say a label because we own a lot of music ourselves. We went to a lot of the large music labels saying, look, we have built this platform. Why don't you also put up your music?
01:31:03
Speaker
on the platform and whoever wants to license it can do it. And labels, as I have explained throughout this call, they needed those minimum guarantees and we refused to pay the minimum guarantees. We said, no, no.
01:31:15
Speaker
Because i also, as a person, I stand against that model. I stand deeply against the model of a minimum guarantee.
Sustainable Business Models in Music
01:31:21
Speaker
It's a sure shot way of shooting yourself in the foot in the long run because you make yourself so weak in terms of building any genuine business model.
01:31:30
Speaker
um So we said, no, we would rather build a business with proper unit economics. They said, then in that case, you build a business and you come to us. And that's what we've done over the last three years. i think since we launched Hooper in 22, you know, we've sold close 125 B2B subscriptions. So we've got 125 clients right from Amintra to Mariko, ITC,
01:31:53
Speaker
Himalaya, the man company, IPL teams, close to 18,000 content creator subscriptions sold. So Ranveer Brar, Flying Beast, Ashish Vidyarthi.
01:32:05
Speaker
And labels noticed all of that. So for for me, this whole transition of building, it happened in a sequential manner. doing enough music myself.
01:32:16
Speaker
I was an academic guy before that, engineering, MBA, then did this music, then started feeling that could I do something larger than myself? Is my legacy only my songs? Can I create something that transforms the industry? or you know Because my journey is such that I should be doing something bigger.
01:32:34
Speaker
Then starting with Songfest, getting inspired by Batchmates, meeting Meghna and then moving into a tech phase and somewhere I think the trigger of my songs being used without my permission has always kept me aligned with what an artist goes through when their music is sort of used and I think that is a very strong catalyst.
01:32:55
Speaker
Even today, the purpose Hooper is to create maximum value for artists and our partners. If they succeed, we succeed. So,
01:33:05
Speaker
We have moved from being just a company that wants to sell licenses of its own catalogs to now working with the industry. And which is why somewhere I also still keep making songs because I don't want to ever let go of what it is to be an artist, what it feels to have the joy of people listening to your music, the joy of somebody using your music.
01:33:25
Speaker
its It keeps me very, very close to the pulse of what the ah you know music industry is.
Vision for Impact in the Music Industry
01:33:31
Speaker
And apart from that, I'm very, very much aware and crude in about the fact that this is a very patient and a long term business.
01:33:38
Speaker
um I don't think I'm doing this because i want to make a quick buck as a startup founder, jack up, you know, let's say and sell and exit and, you know, have fun. I've never been that kind of a person. And really in this industry, if I create something where just the way an IPRS has today grown,
01:33:56
Speaker
15 times in revenue and all of us have seen the benefits of it as artists. Could Hooper also contribute to a you know, increase in revenue where artists and labels thank us saying, look, there was a pre-Hoopers and a post-Hoopers period. So thinking about that is what gives me the maximum joy and excitement of building this business.
01:34:17
Speaker
So ah I have a bunch of questions i' want to ask here. ah Do you currently have like Bollywood music from the labels? Have the labels come on board or that is yet to happen?
01:34:30
Speaker
We brought our first Bollywood label on board, which is Yashraj Films. So last to last month when we launch in April when we launched Hooper Smash. They are the first label that is on board.
01:34:42
Speaker
What is Hooper Smash? So Hooper Smash is an extension of Hooper where... we licensed third party songs. And the reason why we kept the name Smash for this product extension is because one, in a way, it provides you smash hits.
01:34:59
Speaker
ah When we have sold B2B licenses as Hooper, one of the constant requirements from the market is that they are, I need Bollywood songs, I need trending songs.
01:35:09
Speaker
Basically, I need the smash hits. So Hooper Smash provides you licenses for those. Because there is a clear revenue when you share with not just the labels, also the artists, in a way it also smashes the notion that music is free, smashes the notion that for artists music, you know, there is no money from live shows. a pass up and that's So there is a bit of a
Hooper Smash Launch and Licensing Strategies
01:35:32
Speaker
philosophy to that. So it is a product extension that we launched in April.
01:35:36
Speaker
The first label to come on board is Yashraj Films. um With that, we've got close to two odd thousand songs. And we also brought in a bunch of regional labels from Punjab to ah the East, some Marathi music. So we've got close to 18,000 third party songs now.
01:35:55
Speaker
And we realized that We will be able to get every single label on board, but it's important to go in a phased manner where we build success stories. So you will now see YRF on the platform.
01:36:07
Speaker
In this year, we will see probably two, three more labels coming in. ah And Dikhe Gaiyu, you know, Merchant Records came in, Salim Suleiman, their music has just been onboarded on the platform. 380 independent artists from the likes of a panther, ah you know, to independent artists like a punya have come on board.
01:36:26
Speaker
Some famous artists like Diljeet Dosanj, Neha Kakkad, then Sidhu Musewala's songs are here on the platform. So it's a terrific ah product extension that we've launched.
01:36:38
Speaker
And for the first time, we are over. Yeah. Like the big mainstream opportunity is this, right? Like. Oh, it is huge. it is huge. it also comes with a lot of responsibility because now for the first time we are sort of answerable to our partners and earlier it was only our catalog. Right now we are finding it very exciting because new songs keep coming.
01:37:01
Speaker
So you also have to, the programming has sort of changed a lot. Multiple languages are flowing in. So we are now getting a lot of catalogs from the south. We'll be getting some catalogs even from other countries. So our entire way of tagging, which was earlier pretty much manual, has now started becoming a little hybrid in terms of, you know, and even using intelligence from what we have in Hooper to smartly programming the platform as the number of SKUs has shot up dramatically.
01:37:31
Speaker
So that is Hooper Smash. Yes, Bollywood will be a part of it. Regional films will also part of it. Hooper Smash is, again, subscription model, like, you pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access. No, Hooper Smash is in fact a pay per track model.
01:37:45
Speaker
We are going back to that unit economics theory that it is very important for us to have a very clear offering to the influencer or the brand saying that, okay, you like say, Besharam Rang, it's currently trending on Instagram, pay let's say 12,000 or 18,000 rupees for it.
01:38:03
Speaker
ah A certain part goes to the label, a certain part remains with Hooper Smash. as the platform fee enterprise large enterprises who are already our clients have requested us to try and work out enterprise packs where there is a certain volume saving if let's say they license 500 songs or a thousand tracks because there is that kind of volume of content being created by them today across different platforms and we are in the process of trying to figure out what is the best way to do it so that the label also makes the most out of it
01:38:34
Speaker
And the brand also sort of gets. But even on Hooper Smash, you'll see some packs. Like there is, say, a Diwali pack or a party pack. Or even there are packs like, say, a D2C pack and so on, where you will probably get savings to buy multiple products at one time. But otherwise, it's not a subscription model.
01:38:57
Speaker
OK.
01:39:00
Speaker
That is, I mean, it's friction, right? Eventually, like platforms that really scale do so by going like Epidemic Sound, all-you-can-eat approach, flat monthly subscription.
01:39:17
Speaker
um are like Apple Music first used to ah have like a pay per song, like whatever, a dollar per song was. And then Spotify kind of showed the way of all-you-can-eat models, just flat monthly subscription. um So do you also plan to eventually move there?
01:39:38
Speaker
Historically, know this entire bit of a brand using a song has been ah very standard function in labels, and it's called a sync. And i'll I'll have to tell you why we have two...
01:39:53
Speaker
understand where the labels come from, protect their interests too, and also try to be reasonable with brands. Synchronization fees for, let's say today you would have seen u ah my 11th circle has used a song called, and they have done a, this of,
01:40:10
Speaker
ah joe and My 11th circle meja or something like that. Or you would see Spinny using a song from Khiladi or some other films. A lot of these synchronizations happen. Farm Easy would have taken Urvasi.
01:40:22
Speaker
Typically, these synchronizations fetch the labels a massive sum of money per synchronization. So it labels are used to getting paid anywhere between 25 lakh to 50 lakh to even a crore sometimes for a hit song.
01:40:36
Speaker
For them, And why is this is for TV and radio and YouTube ads. For television, mainly for television. Or even let's say sometimes what happens is a new movie is coming up.
01:40:47
Speaker
They may license a song to be you know from a previously released film to use in a certain context in the movie. What tends to happen over here is that brands are sort of used to getting paid a certain volume of money. And ah sorry, the labels are getting they've They've been used to getting paid a certain amount for these synchronizations.
01:41:09
Speaker
They've also done deals with, say, the streaming platforms or the otd the social media platforms where UGC content has been sort of paid for by the minimum guarantees. But when we keep a subscription model for brands, one is you tend to assume that a Quesariya or a Besharamrang will be at the same price as probably a song by an independent artist because it it quickly moves to an all you can eat kind of a model.
01:41:35
Speaker
Two, the labels feel deeply worried that this can undermine or undervalue a song when it comes to larger use cases. And I wouldn't say that they are wrong in that thinking. If I were in their shoes, I would have to protect because you know it tends to become a bother some issue for them.
Challenges with Music Subscription Models
01:41:54
Speaker
We have also seen that ah In any case, the brands will be willing to pay a higher amount for these famous songs. So right now to start with and to get a good um understanding of the appetite of every brand, we've kept the prices very reasonable, but we've kept it at an individual level.
01:42:11
Speaker
It gives us a good understanding of one, the velocity at which the brands may want to be using tracks like these. Will they be willing to pay a 10,000 or are they coming and buying tracks only worth a thousand, two thousand rupees?
01:42:24
Speaker
These are very initial years where understanding of pricing is also very crucial for us. ah Yes, there could be an angle where and typically founders think like that, that look, I want to create value for myself. So let me just keep it a you know a subscription. and But I feel that is a very dangerous way of looking at it from an industry perspective. Had I not been an artist, would have pushed and forced a subscription model.
01:42:49
Speaker
But right now, I feel that that is exactly what the industry needs to get out of. So we've chosen a slightly different route with a paper track, paper usage kind of a model.
01:43:01
Speaker
Okay, got it. to add to that, I feel that if the, if you know, the experience of buying licenses becomes as easy as a quick commerce, right? Where you go and add a packet of chips and a bottle of Pepsi and whatever it is and quickly check out, right?
01:43:19
Speaker
Today, brand managers and social media teams are creating reels on a daily basis. And it is at the time of creation when they know that, okay, I want to use this track. This is trending, let's use it. If they get into that habit of quickly coming on the platform, picking up a couple of tracks, checking out smoothly and getting the tracks to use, I think that would work a lot better.
01:43:38
Speaker
It also is very easy for us from a revenue share perspective. ah Some of these licenses could mean substantial revenue for artists. I'll give you an example. be Itc Bingo Tay Day Mede. ITC has a chips brand called Bingo.
01:43:52
Speaker
And within that, there is another variant called Tay Day Mede. They licensed a bunch of Assamese tracks for promoting certain Behoo related reels that they were creating. And they also wanted to use it across different platforms. So I think one or two of those tracks fetched us about 30, 32,000 rupees for one single license.
01:44:18
Speaker
ah And the artist who was a relatively, is a relatively unknown artist from Assam, got paid about 21,000 rupees as his fee. And for this artist, 21,000 sitting in Assam, relatively unknown guy, is a fairly large sum of money.
01:44:35
Speaker
If I were to total his entire streaming income over the last three years, it would not be half of what he got paid from OneMicrosync. Now, again, if we do a subscription model where in the end he gets 20 rupees or 18 rupees, I think it may not really help him.
01:44:50
Speaker
So in Hooper, we have stuck to our subscription model. The original Hooper format is a subscription model where a brand pays 40,000 rupees a year and gets unlimited downloads.
01:45:02
Speaker
ah Individual creators can pay 599 or 249 a month and get unlimited downloads. But when it comes to these third party tracks and especially the smash hits, we have to maintain a certain value of those songs.
01:45:16
Speaker
yeah Okay. ah So there is already an established sync industry. You are expanding that further into micro sync. So sync is when you want to advertise on TV and use music in your ad.
01:45:32
Speaker
Micro sync is when you're creating reels and also YouTube ads ah like brands often. Absolutely. Any kind of digital branded or commercial content will fall under the digital micro sync.
01:45:43
Speaker
ah Macro Sync is where a brand would want to use a song in a larger context. the TV ad and the YouTube ad is the same. So and in that case, they would the sync agreement would cover digital also.
01:45:57
Speaker
Yes. Having said that, Hooper Smash, there are two distinct categories. The first is the license that gives you the permission to use the track only in a short format reel or a YouTube shorts video or an equivalent video on your own platform.
01:46:16
Speaker
A lot of platforms are also today putting videos up on their own app or own platform. For anything that would fall under a OTT commercial or digital so there's a section called DVC which is a digital video commercial and then there's TVC television commercial you have to procure a license by requesting a quote.
01:46:37
Speaker
Because right now we have seen that in certain cases, let's say you may get a license for a popular song for as low as eight or 10,000 rupees only to see that the commercial was short with Alia Bhatt and probably went into crores.
01:46:49
Speaker
At that point in time, the music copyright holder will feel quite jilted that, hey, was completely sort of short sold here. So it is very important. So we have distinguished that entire bit into short format content, which is typically organic.
01:47:04
Speaker
content in the form of Reels, YouTube Shorts and in-app videos versus your TVC, DVC, ODT content is kept separate. Is there a ah platform for sync deals at the TVC level or each brand goes to the label ah and negotiates directly?
01:47:22
Speaker
Currently, each brand has to go through the label. It's very cumbersome for both the brand and the label. um For the brand, it is very cumbersome because they have to now call somebody from a label and initiate this deal.
01:47:34
Speaker
most labels don't have any kind of fixed rate card. So depending upon who the brand is, they might just quote anything. For the label also, it's a little cumbersome because there's too much bandwidth that gets clogged.
01:47:46
Speaker
Honestly, one out of four or five conversations may end up materializing. So they also get quite fed up of the entire bit. So Hooper as a platform with Hooper Smash is a bridge between brands and labels, not just for micro sync, but also macro.
01:48:00
Speaker
In fact, with our partners, we have seen that there has been a growth in the number of MacroSync inquiries too. Because now let's say earlier, okay, if an ITC or an HUL or even a large brand like a Myntra wants to license a famous song, they may be able to get to the label. It may not be very difficult.
01:48:18
Speaker
But let's say a Guru Kripal jwellers wants to now license a famous song and absolutely has the money to pay, it will be 10-50 lakhs for giving it.
01:48:29
Speaker
But no idea of who to contact, what is the protocol. The label also has never dealt with these entities before. So, you know, the whole thing becomes very challenging. That is where we are seeing that Hooper will play a great role in streamlining this entire bit.
01:48:45
Speaker
Similarly, giving intelligence to brands that, hey, you know what, you should be using this particular song. It might just resonate big time with your audience is something that a platform can do.
Aligning Music with Brand Strategies
01:48:56
Speaker
versus an ad agency person just using his gut feeling and saying, okay, let's go with this song because I like it.
01:49:03
Speaker
How do you generate that intelligence? How would you tell a brand that this the right one? have a fair bit of intelligence because of Hooper where we are able to link certain genres, moods, and BPMs to certain use cases like fashion, travel, food, and so on, number one.
01:49:20
Speaker
Number two, we are also able to gradually on Hooper's smash, study the same trends in terms of what is working for a certain, what kind of music does an FMCG company typically license?
01:49:33
Speaker
ah What is the ratio of trending songs to other kinds of music? ah We have started sending proactive mails, basses, all of this data to different kinds of clients saying that, okay, you're an automobile brand, you should be using X, y and Z. Also, look, we are a music company, so we often overestimate the knowledge that another company may have about music trends.
01:49:56
Speaker
We have a huge amount of trend check that goes on in Hooper in terms of what is trending in pop, hip hop, electronic. What is the topmost songs searched on Shazam?
01:50:08
Speaker
But a company that's into selling, let's say, pet care products may just quickly go to Insta and go with their gut. But if somebody feeds them this info that This kind of music could actually work very well for your customers and could probably see a higher engagement.
01:50:26
Speaker
ah That is where we are now getting at because it's not just about being a platform where you get a copyright safe license. I think that's fine. But the idea eventually is how can the music help you succeed as a brand?
01:50:39
Speaker
How does it contribute to your strategy? Some of the brands, the more evolved ones who have sat with us have shared with us their need scopes and have told us, look, if I'm creating 1500 digital videos a year, i want to try and understand just the way I do with the right influencers that is the music that i'm using actually having some science behind it.
01:51:00
Speaker
Like earlier people worked with any influencer, but gradually that it started getting a little filtered out to, hey, we stand for something. We have a positioning, so should our influencers and so on.
01:51:11
Speaker
Similarly, does the music really have some kind of strategic connect? So we have a vertical called Hooper Brand Solutions in the company that currently does this in a bespoke or an offline manner.
01:51:24
Speaker
But all the learnings that we have been getting from HBS could allow us to do this in a productized manner too. So if we put the brands to that, then then i think it'll be a great win. Then it'll be exciting for a brand manager to come for those kind of inside.
01:51:42
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Have you raised one so far for Hooper? We raised two rounds back in 2021 then one in 2023. How much have you raised? In 2021, our first pre-seed round was close to half a million. Three and a half crore is what we had raised.
01:52:02
Speaker
In the same year, we also raised about a million dollars more. But Great decision at that point in time because 2022 turned out to be a very challenging year for anyone to raise funds. So at that time, we sort of had funds. We also needed capital at that time, Akshay, because we had realized that we may have to build our own bank of songs.
01:52:20
Speaker
It was not going to be as easy to get third party tracks at that point in time because labels were asking for MG. So we built our own catalog, launched the platform in 2022.
01:52:31
Speaker
In 2023 and then early 2024, we raised slightly over half a million dollars again, just about 5 watt crore. ah Let me yeah kind of end with this. um You know, people who are passionate about music ah may not necessarily want to follow the path of but being on contract ah to Bollywood, but maybe more inspired by Western artists like a Taylor Swift or whatever, who What's your advice to them? How should they go about
01:53:02
Speaker
ah ah you know building building themselves up ah in a smart way?
Authenticity and Business Skills for Musicians
01:53:13
Speaker
As an artist, I think the most important thing is to stay true to the kind of music you truly resonate with. Whenever we as artists try to be somebody we are not simply because others are doing it or it's a trend, you tend to feel a sense of dissatisfaction or a disconnect with your own music.
01:53:36
Speaker
All of us as artists who would have fallen prey to this at some point in time because someone else sings like that or somebody else is putting songs like that. It's working. Let me try to be that person. But at the end of the day, across my, you know,
01:53:49
Speaker
15, 16 plus years of experience as an artist, I can definitely ah say with confidence that the biggest joy comes with genuinely putting out the music you love yourself.
01:54:00
Speaker
And then you, if the music is good, you will attract your tribe, you will find your listeners and your fans. And that is where the most sense of enrichment or joy comes.
01:54:11
Speaker
ah It is definitely good to keep checking the trends and I think it's it's good to check what kind of sounds are happening. Could that embellish my music?
01:54:22
Speaker
Ed Sheeran, for example, is a great ah you know artist and recently he's come out with a song where it's an English song. It's very much in the Ed Sheeran space, but he's used just a Punjabi flavor to create a hook and it's blown up and out. But nowhere does a song say look like he's trying to be somebody he's not. Even when Coldplay did...
01:54:43
Speaker
ah certain projects here which they shot in India, it is Coldplay at heart. right So being true to your sound and to who you are as an artist is very important.
01:54:54
Speaker
ah Number one, I feel that
01:54:59
Speaker
In Hooper over the last two years, three years, we've interacted with so many new artists. and on one side, I often do feel worried for them because there is so much talent on Instagram right now that artists are in a higher space of what you know feeling a little insecure because talent is endless. If today go on Instagram and I start seeing one singing video, I'm telling you there will be hundreds of videos and all of them equally good, good looking singers, guitarists, instrumentalists.
01:55:29
Speaker
So there is a sense of you know insecurity amongst artists saying, you know how do I cut through? But that is exactly where trying to be authentic helps. I would say that Indian music is also in safe hands.
01:55:42
Speaker
We are currently working with a lot of artists who are very, very good at Indian music. They are in fact learned I would say it's just that India I feel Akshay that was always the talent but because of places like Insta and YouTube you just get to see my god there is it's endless it's like you know an abyss of talent we are just now doing a project with Universal Music where we are working with close to 100 different artists and
01:56:15
Speaker
Literally there is a competition geek kiss <unk> naboli because they are all good and they are people who are following Western trends. Some of people who are absolutely Indian. Some are people who are trying to do something which is an Indo-Western kind of a fusion.
01:56:31
Speaker
ah it is deeply exciting. But what if I am an artist today, I would have to find what I truly like to do and stay true to that. Otherwise, there is so much noise on social media that you tend to get deeply pulled in any direction.
01:56:48
Speaker
It is a very tough time to actually, I would say, in a way, be an artist. While it's easy because you've got YouTube, Spotify and the distribution part could be taken care of. I think the the struggle is to deeply reflect within yourself and say that what do I really stand for?
01:57:04
Speaker
And my advice to any artist would be interact with your community on various platforms. ah It's better to have a thousand loyal fans rather than chasing crazy numbers. Start with that, nourish that community.
01:57:19
Speaker
You know, just like we say in startups, were both their retention rate. So we focused on retention rate and realized that we've now crossed an 80% retention rate. So we feel good about it. Similarly, if you have loyal people, that number eventually compounds, right? So if any artist watches this, that would be my advice. And the last piece would be be a smarter musician. You know, as a musician, we tend to just get caught up in practicing our instrument and making, you know, theoretical or whatever advances in music.
01:57:49
Speaker
But try to learn every aspect of the business. What is live? What should an artist manager give me? How should good contracts be structured? What is revenue from live shows? What is the IPRS?
01:58:01
Speaker
What is Sync, Micro Sync? What is a Hooper? Today we meet some artists who are very inquisitive and you know that these are a little smarter. They have created different revenue streams. What is my brand like? What should I, you know, they think of themselves like a bit of a product.
01:58:16
Speaker
And that I think is ah is the sign of somebody who coupled with their passion for their craft will make it big the in the industry. So,
01:58:26
Speaker
ah You know, um I was hoping for some more tactical advice also. Like, for example, on YouTube, you have, I think, half a million followers for Songfest. On Instagram, you have close to 80,000 followers.
01:58:41
Speaker
um So, you know, should young artists focus on building follower count? How does that happen? Or is your advice that if you are authentic and focus on 1,000 true fans, the followers will come automatically? Don't stress about that.
01:58:58
Speaker
In my experience, every time i chased authenticity and put out something i truly liked, I found that people resonated with it and my follower counts grew.
01:59:09
Speaker
In fact, wherever I became a slave of my own sound and tried to just do something because my previous song worked in a certain way and I'm just trying to Abe something hoping that... ah say made i like So I think yes, from a tactical perspective, look, there are three to four large platforms that you have to be a part of, at least YouTube, Spotify, and let's take Instagram as a third platform.
01:59:36
Speaker
ah a good consistent presence on each of these is important like there is ah there is a theory which says that content artist and celebrity where the first is producing consistently good quality content just start with that any kind of consistency helps your listeners tune into you because they know that there is something to expect say every week or every month Even today, when you are running a podcast, if you follow a certain consistency, you will see that your listeners then believe that, okay, Akshay going to put out something versus disappearing for six months and then coming back with three content pieces, then again vanishing.
Maintaining Audience Engagement
02:00:15
Speaker
So the first is consistency. ah
02:00:20
Speaker
Even on YouTube and Spotify, both are in a way linked. YouTube allows you to put a bit of a face value to what you create. Instagram consistency is also equally important.
02:00:31
Speaker
I've seen artists that are very tactical here again, that they use YouTube for larger releases and they use Instagram for much smaller, regular content than they put out. Today, artists are also not hesitant to create content that shows a side of their personality rather than just musical ability.
02:00:47
Speaker
So showing them who you really are. If the monsoons are open, what does that mean to you? So people get a window of you know what is it that this XYZ person is and probably sitting and crafting down that sitting, making a plan that, OK, Monday to Friday, this is the kind of content I'm going to regularly put out.
02:01:07
Speaker
um Maybe having a quarterly plan that I'm going to put out one big song or two big songs this quarter and I'm going to have some smaller pieces. ah Not being afraid to invest also. For example, if you're doing live concerts and investing in a DOP who travels with you or investing in some kind of asset that makes your content stronger is something that we see the the smarter artists do and that is why they get consistent followers.
02:01:36
Speaker
From a Spotify perspective also, there are a lot of hygiene things that you must do. Uploading songs a few weeks before its release, filling up all the metadata correctly. Like most artists are lazy and they don't fill in everything.
02:01:51
Speaker
Submitting your songs for playlists, putting up pre-release you know content pieces on different handles. ah Tomorrow, even on Hooper Smash, if an artist tells us that my song is apt for friendship day,
02:02:06
Speaker
there's a high chance that we will plug it in into the right playlists. right So the metadata matters a lot. um I think all of these factors are important, even networking and constantly upgrading your musical circle is very crucial.
02:02:22
Speaker
I have hung out at any point where I've seen rapid explosion. It was a time when I hung out with musicians who were just only talking how to become better at their craft. And why are the hits, you know, why are these songs working? What could we do different?
02:02:37
Speaker
It makes you think and go back. So if you're sort of stuck in a rut, change your circle. Don't be afraid to hang out with folks. Right. So all of these are very tactical plans, network, meet people.
02:02:51
Speaker
I would say these are things. There are a lot of artists today who are also using communities like, um you know, Discord and other places. They visible. They attend conferences like an all about music. They participate in it.
02:03:06
Speaker
And I think that is the smarter musician that I feel. ah will eventually be there. But nothing truly at the end of the day beats working on your craft. So fundamentally, the your talent refining has to happen. it That is the core.
02:03:25
Speaker
And all of these are things that you must do today if you want to make it in the the digital ecosystem. yeah Okay. ah Thank you so much, Kaurav. It was a fascinating chat. I learned so much from you.
02:03:39
Speaker
My pleasure, Akshay, entirely. Thank you so much for inviting me.