Pop Is Back!

Badshah, Harddy Sandhu, Akasa Sing and Aastha Gill are resurrecting the Indi-pop glory days, one chartbuster at a time Shridhar Subramaniam of Sony Music India on what its takes to make a commercial star

- Nirmika Singh

Unless you live under a rock or prefer to stay miles away from Hindi music, chances are that you might have recently enjoyed or even danced to a tune by some or all these artists: Badshah, Aastha Gill, Harrdy Sandhu and Akasa Singh. None of these four artists call themselves a ‘Bollywood singer’ – a label that many a singer would have loved to proudly wear as a badge till as late as two years ago. None of these singers even have aspirations to become playback voices. What they do want, however, is to become music icons. While Badshah is inching towards that goal, it is just a matter of time that the rest of this gang will follow suit.

When I meet Shridhar Subramaniam, President, India and Middle East, Sony Music, he tells me the non-film music world is changing in a way it never has. The film music or what is called the ‘soundtrack industry’ (comprising Bollywood and regional sectors), which in the past decade snuffed out the artist-led/non-film ecosystem, is finally shape-shifting. “Pop is now a sustainable business. It’s not going to vanish overnight and it’s not going to have a bubble moment. We’re at the beginning of a massive expansion across genres, languages and demographics,” he says.

While Sony Music India might boast of having a stronghold in the nonfilm markets since it started out over 22 years ago (music maestro A.R. Rahman’s 1997 record Vande Mataram is the label’s highest grossing nonfilm album till date), today it finds itself in the company of competitive label and multi-channel networks that are all vying for a piece of the pop pie.