Croon your way to fame on
muzigle.com
G.Ram Mohan
Jun 08, 2010
For a nation which introduced musical instruments like
veena, flute and tabla to the world, the current state of Indian music which is
increasingly turning movie-centric is surely a reason to ponder.
Unlike Western countries where anybody with talent can prepare a music album and work their way up the success ladder, avenues to showcase new talent are minimal in India.
Started by enthusiasts who want to promote Indian music, the ambience of the office of www.muzigle.com in Hyderabad aims to fill this void by promoting them. The office, which itself is draped and decked with flex covering of musical instruments, captures what the website aims to achieve.
Unlike Western countries where anybody with talent can prepare a music album and work their way up the success ladder, avenues to showcase new talent are minimal in India.
Started by enthusiasts who want to promote Indian music, the ambience of the office of www.muzigle.com in Hyderabad aims to fill this void by promoting them. The office, which itself is draped and decked with flex covering of musical instruments, captures what the website aims to achieve.
“For a country which gave ‘sapta swaras’ to the world,
going gaga over and getting buoyed by a single Oscar is preposterous. It only
mirrors the dire straits Indian music is in and shows it needs to be supported.
In the next phase, we will facilitate the coming together of the lyricist, tune and the music composer in the virtual world from anywhere and collaborate to create music. We will have an online synthesizer which will do this.
"Of the slew of flicks made in the country, on an average only 50 songs become chartbusters and the rest end up a damp squib. We are the first player in the digital platform who intends to promote Indian music,” said Anand Kuchibotla, co-founder and CEO of www.muzigle.com.
Why did you want to start the mugizle.com?
Indian music has become movie-centric, which by itself is no cause for inspiration with woeful lacking of originality, creativity and is frequently plagiarised. There are many genres of Indian music but getting exposure to them has become next to impossible. In the West, anybody can become a Michael Jackson by bringing out musical albums.
In the olden days, All India Radio was the only place whether enthusiasts could hope of showing their talent. The reality shows on the idiot box provide such a scope. Our aim is to do it on the digital platform. We want to promote music talent and hope to be the biggest social network for global Indians. The beta version of the site was launched 10 days back.
Many of us who hum songs, desire in our heart of hearts, to karaoke to the foot-tapping numbers of A.R. Rahman or Ilayaraja. Our website allows them to sing to their tunes and record them online and share with friends through social networking sites like Facebook. This is the first of its kind to do it on the digital platform. We don’t tie-up talent to ourselves and allow them to sing for any other musical sites and companies too.
Tell us something about the website?
Our main aim is to showcase new and up-and-coming Indian talent in music. Facility to karaoke is the coolest feature on our site. One can even post his/her video if the PC or laptop has a webcam and post them on Facebook and ask friends to vote for them.
Any body can market their music on our website by uploading it for free. If young musicians come to us, we create microsite for them. When they start getting revenue, we will share it with them. But the artiste is free to sign up with anyone else without any objections. Every artiste with us will have a dashboard. The artiste will get to know how many have listened to him and downloaded everything is transparent.
Your website has a section for events. Would you please elaborate on that? Do you organize music related events?
Anybody can post their music related events in the website. They can even post their video version also.
Who are your website’s target group?
People who are basically music lovers are our target group, the NRIs especially. Indians living in Sydney would want to buy and hear Indian music. Physically carrying the music CDs and DVDs is not feasible on long distance travel.
These sections can come to us for any kind of music. We have music in all Indian languages and genres. Though we have and sell Bollywood and Tollywood music, we mainly showcase independent music talent.
What is the revenue model of your website? What was the initial investment? What is your current headcount?
We provide music of all Indian languages in different genres. We hope to get revenue from three sources: revenue from downloads of music, ringtones and advertisement revenue. We are yet to market our website for this. Our current headcount is 25. The site is maintained from US but have some operations like mixing done from our office in Hyderabad.
This venture was angel funded to the tune of one million dollars to start with. Going further, at a later stage, we will raise money through venture capitalists once we evaluate it. The website was started about a year ago and has received some rave reviews for its music player.
We have agreements with the likes of Sony, Tips, Venus, Sarigama, Aditya with the latest and the oldest lilting songs. All our content is legally licensed from them. Our platform will allow people to share music without boundaries across the world.
How are you going to promote the website?
We are adopting all available means to promote the site. The site has 1,200 fans on Facebook. We are using SEO (search engine optimization), online advertisement, e-mail marketing, SEM (search engine marketing) and affiliate marketing.
Tell us about Siliconandhra.org and its activities.
I am the co-founder of muzigle.com and founded www.siliconandhra.org. I have a passion for Indian art and culture and come across lot of talent. I want to make my passion and profession the same. Siliconandhra had held an event with 1,60,000 singers who sang Annamacharya kirtanas in Secunderabad parade grounds. Through the manabadi initiative we teach Telugu in 16 states in the United States.
Tell us about yourself.
I did my M.A in economics from Andhra University and did MS in paper technology in US. Living in US for the past 23 years, I still carry my Indian passport with pride and retain my roots here. My children are also into classical dance. I was into marketing for 16 years and was in-charge of global marketing for Yahoo, country manager for India for Kimberley-Clark which makes diapers like Huggies and worked for Dialpad, an internet telephony company.
In the next phase, we will facilitate the coming together of the lyricist, tune and the music composer in the virtual world from anywhere and collaborate to create music. We will have an online synthesizer which will do this.
"Of the slew of flicks made in the country, on an average only 50 songs become chartbusters and the rest end up a damp squib. We are the first player in the digital platform who intends to promote Indian music,” said Anand Kuchibotla, co-founder and CEO of www.muzigle.com.
Why did you want to start the mugizle.com?
Indian music has become movie-centric, which by itself is no cause for inspiration with woeful lacking of originality, creativity and is frequently plagiarised. There are many genres of Indian music but getting exposure to them has become next to impossible. In the West, anybody can become a Michael Jackson by bringing out musical albums.
In the olden days, All India Radio was the only place whether enthusiasts could hope of showing their talent. The reality shows on the idiot box provide such a scope. Our aim is to do it on the digital platform. We want to promote music talent and hope to be the biggest social network for global Indians. The beta version of the site was launched 10 days back.
Many of us who hum songs, desire in our heart of hearts, to karaoke to the foot-tapping numbers of A.R. Rahman or Ilayaraja. Our website allows them to sing to their tunes and record them online and share with friends through social networking sites like Facebook. This is the first of its kind to do it on the digital platform. We don’t tie-up talent to ourselves and allow them to sing for any other musical sites and companies too.
Tell us something about the website?
Our main aim is to showcase new and up-and-coming Indian talent in music. Facility to karaoke is the coolest feature on our site. One can even post his/her video if the PC or laptop has a webcam and post them on Facebook and ask friends to vote for them.
Any body can market their music on our website by uploading it for free. If young musicians come to us, we create microsite for them. When they start getting revenue, we will share it with them. But the artiste is free to sign up with anyone else without any objections. Every artiste with us will have a dashboard. The artiste will get to know how many have listened to him and downloaded everything is transparent.
Your website has a section for events. Would you please elaborate on that? Do you organize music related events?
Anybody can post their music related events in the website. They can even post their video version also.
Who are your website’s target group?
People who are basically music lovers are our target group, the NRIs especially. Indians living in Sydney would want to buy and hear Indian music. Physically carrying the music CDs and DVDs is not feasible on long distance travel.
These sections can come to us for any kind of music. We have music in all Indian languages and genres. Though we have and sell Bollywood and Tollywood music, we mainly showcase independent music talent.
What is the revenue model of your website? What was the initial investment? What is your current headcount?
We provide music of all Indian languages in different genres. We hope to get revenue from three sources: revenue from downloads of music, ringtones and advertisement revenue. We are yet to market our website for this. Our current headcount is 25. The site is maintained from US but have some operations like mixing done from our office in Hyderabad.
This venture was angel funded to the tune of one million dollars to start with. Going further, at a later stage, we will raise money through venture capitalists once we evaluate it. The website was started about a year ago and has received some rave reviews for its music player.
We have agreements with the likes of Sony, Tips, Venus, Sarigama, Aditya with the latest and the oldest lilting songs. All our content is legally licensed from them. Our platform will allow people to share music without boundaries across the world.
How are you going to promote the website?
We are adopting all available means to promote the site. The site has 1,200 fans on Facebook. We are using SEO (search engine optimization), online advertisement, e-mail marketing, SEM (search engine marketing) and affiliate marketing.
Tell us about Siliconandhra.org and its activities.
I am the co-founder of muzigle.com and founded www.siliconandhra.org. I have a passion for Indian art and culture and come across lot of talent. I want to make my passion and profession the same. Siliconandhra had held an event with 1,60,000 singers who sang Annamacharya kirtanas in Secunderabad parade grounds. Through the manabadi initiative we teach Telugu in 16 states in the United States.
Tell us about yourself.
I did my M.A in economics from Andhra University and did MS in paper technology in US. Living in US for the past 23 years, I still carry my Indian passport with pride and retain my roots here. My children are also into classical dance. I was into marketing for 16 years and was in-charge of global marketing for Yahoo, country manager for India for Kimberley-Clark which makes diapers like Huggies and worked for Dialpad, an internet telephony company.
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