What happened? How did we go from being known to have creative maestros in the music industry that were celebrated internationally to just refurbishing pieces of art that were already successful? Here is me going down the rabbit hole of understanding why the Indian music industry has reached a point, where at least the majority, is only focusing on remaking already successful iconic music.
Let’s first understand what it was and why we are here?
Origin & Popularity
The Indian music industry has evolved rapidly as the decades have gone by. Possibly, it had to adapt to the craziest changes and at the same time, improvise so that it can thrive as the years go by. Film music has always been what the masses have gravitated towards since the 1950s. Whilst, music was only promoted on All India Radio, its dissemination was highly restricted due to the conservative perspective of film music being crass and vulgar. Classical music was promoted more, but with the onset of the 60s and the rising popularity of Kishore Kumar and SD Burman, who had a huge pop influence, film music started getting promoted to a much higher frequency. The music contained a combination of western influence and the physical sales both of film and solo artists were restricted to vinyl records or LPs, which was only purchased by a small section of the Indian population. Music producers became celebrities in their own right and there was a huge demand by directors, producers to bag the right talent for their films, as the music was such an integral part of marketing film for theatres. The 70s saw the onset of live recordings of concerts being showcased on Doordarshan, increased activity on All India Radio for film music and most importantly, the emergence of cassettes. A more accessible and affordable way of purchasing music. Cassettes in the 80s became the primary method of listening to music, further leading to the emergence of music companies in the form of T-series and Venus. This led to rampant piracy issues. Accessible physical sales led to more third-party recordings of music that could be sold at cheaper rates to the general public. From the late 80s to the onset of the 21st century, you have to understand, musicians and music companies were literally royalty and were making huge sums of money.
Music films and solo careers
You have to understand now that especially in the 90s, both the music as well as the film industry had a monetary incentive of creation. When films would be slated to release in theatres, the albums of these films would release for physical sales in the form of cassettes and with the onset of the late 90s, even with CDs. A large portion of the revenue generated by films would be its music sales through cassettes and CDs. Promotion would take place through dissemination on the radio, music videos on new music channels like MTV, Channel V and the physical sales would take place in brick and mortars like planet M and Musicland. The volume was so large and the revenue generated so big that film productions actually depended on the music industry to come up with something innovative so that it could drive sales. The 90s saw the success of the music album of the 1990 film, Aashiqui, with close to 20 million copies being sold. Creating a huge cash flow for music, as well as, film producers. With films like DDLJ and Bombay doing sales between 15 to 20 million copies, producers realized the crazy potential in the market. This also led to the emergence of solo artists and indie pop, who would sign under record labels and come out with their own albums, creating a huge revenue stream for themselves beyond their live concerts. Many successful artists like Daler Mehndi and lucky Ali, capitalised during this phase. By the way, the current climate we are in is not when remixes of music have become rampant, it was in the late 90s to the early 2000s where plagiarism became the norm, but still, the vested interest of the large physical sales churned out album after album.
Revenue model and what changed
You have to realise that the digital market and the onset of the internet with streaming platforms like iTunes, Ganna and Spotify, literally led to the musical artists transitioning from king to mere employees. There was a ton of money to be made, both for the record label and the artist when physical sales of CDs and cassettes were taking place. They were literally cashing millions and the margins of the record labels were enormous. Streaming platforms has led to the artists being at a constant disadvantage because they have deals with records labels, who have deals with the streaming platforms, and they get the short end of the stick. Each stream providing literally single digit rupees to the artists, unless they own their own masters, the underlying rights to the songs. Now that record labels don’t earn as much, they don’t pay the artists as much as they earned close to 2 decades ago. The incentive to innovate has completely been lost. Both from the artist’s point of view as well as the record label. You might wonder, the artist makes massive amounts of this revenue through tours, right? But this is only the case with top-tier artists. Mid-level and indie artists barely break-even, with several expenses that are incurred on tour. The music industry has been so severely hit, that the companies had to diversify and transition to film producing. So, there it can result in them receiving better margins. That’s why companies like T-series, Zee have been producing films in the last 8 years. This has helped them experience a huge boom in their revenue stream, leading to their music division not even close to being their primary concern. So what does that lead to? Remixes.