Survival strategies for independent music labels in India

Abstract

There has been significant growth and change across the Indian music industry in recent years. One of the most interesting and exciting ones being the rise and continued growth of an extremely vibrant, musically rich and diverse independent music scene outside of the Bollywood music industry which has dominated the Indian music scene for decades. This report aims to capture a broad picture of the current trends and environmental factors in the music industry at present to come up with a framework which struggling independent artists can use to plan their business decisions to create a revenue generating, stable and sustainable career in music. We have undertaken secondary research of articles, history, data analyses, interviews and opinion pieces of veteran players in the industry as well as collecting detailed insights and information from various independent artists at different stages of their career – from those still struggling to make connections to those that have received mainstream level of success. Firstly, we have developed a 2x2 matrix for four distinct customer segments based on two parameters – indulgence and fundamentalism. This is then followed by analyzing the different stages of an artist’s career developed by Next Big Sound and then working out the major driving forces that can determine the success and failure of the artist at each given stage. Through insights gathered, we then move on to detail what important operational decisions artists need to take to create a sustainable career for themselves. These operational decision factors have been broadly classified into three – Publicity, Distribution and Sources of Revenue. By making choices on these factors, we have come up with the brand position that the artists will arrive at which will decide what type of customer segment they will most appeal to and thereby, determine the level of success they can hope to aspire for.