Louder Than Ever

In a country that,until now,primarily lapped up Bollywood music or Indian music of the more classical sort,the demand for indie music comes as a refreshing change. The indie artistes who play at multiple venues in India and abroad today would have had almost no audience to market their music to,until a few years ago. That,however,has slowly been changing with the opening of venues to perform at as well as websites and other platforms for them to market their music.

Well before the launch of the Nh7 store on Flyte,however,the website Artistaloud.com followed a similar process. The site continues to retail music by a number of artistes — including some lesser-known ones than are currently available on Flyte — but the number of people who actually buy from here is debatable. Another website,Oklisten.com was recently launched in its beta stage and will also stock and sell independent music.

There’s no doubt that at the moment,the best way to sell indie music is through online stores. This apart,the artistes,too,sell their music on their respective websites. For instance,Raghu Dixit and Swarathma allow their fans to buy a single track or the entire album off their websites. Some artistes also attempt to sell physical copies of their albums. However,more often than not,only the albums by some of the best known names find their way to the shelves of music stores.

Rhythm House in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda is one exception. It stocks and promotes some rather obscure bands. “We stock music by a lot of lesser-known artistes who come to us and just hand us their CDs,” says Mehmood Curmally,Director,Rhythm House. “We listen to their music and if we like it,we stock it,” he adds. While some are albums that were just put together at home by the artistes,others have been released on smaller labels such as Meteorik Records. Caesar’s Palace,Slow Down Clown and Spook released their EPs on this label,but despite their growing popularity in the indie music circuit,they managed to sell not more than 20 copies each.

There are,however,other platforms for these musicians to sell physical copies of their albums. The Nh7 store on Flyte,for instance,is working towards stocking them. “Physical copies of Swarathma’s album Topiwalleh are available for order on Flyte and we’re working on doing this with more artistes,” says Srinivasan. The Bangalore-based band,Sulk Station,is encouraging people to email them with orders for CDs of their debut album Till You Appear. The order is then shipped to the customers on cash-on-delivery basis. Some bands tour with copies of their CDs and others sell them at album launches,but the logistic problems of these arrangements — actually carrying these CDs around while travelling — make them that much more difficult.