I have been a keen follower of the Indian indie music scene for over a decade now. In the last five years, the Indian indie music scene and to some extent Bollywood has evolved dramatically and even got itself a completely new identity. That is the good part. However, the not-so-great reality is that the approach major record labels have used to promote and publish music over the decades will no longer work. In an age of new music and musicians, the time has come for the music industry to take a hard look at the changing scene and wake up to fresh approaches before they become completely obsolete. My opinion may not be the most popular but I hope that those reading this will share my beliefs.

I believe that the future is “indie”! The age of the big record label that gives a truckload of money as an advance on a record is a thing of the past, a very distant past. This is the age of the do-it-yourself musician, and why not? The tools are available and the world is the audience, an audience that accepts and appreciates each and every form of music being created. Today, there is nothing to stop someone from picking up a guitar, sing the simplest tunes and become a worldwide rage.

In my humble opinion, the way we are going about fighting music piracy is completely wrong. The ‘Napsters’ and the ‘BitTorrents’ of the world are not about to go away in a hurry and we gain nothing by trying to snuff them out. New networks and better technologies have and will crop up faster than you can call them! After a point, this battle really doesn’t help anyone or anything. And unless you have been living under a rock for the past five years, you already know this.

Instead of trying to find ways to stop piracy, I believe we should focus on trying to make people buy music; make it the easier and better option – make it cool! Give the person who buys music so much more that piracy is just not an option. Today, someone who buys music has the exact same privileges as someone who pirates music. There is no compelling reason to go out and buy music. But what if that was not so? What if music was available as easily and as widely as a bag of chips or a newspaper and came with some interesting privileges and benefits for the person buying? Wouldn’t that make a compelling case for buying music? Or at least be a step in that direction?

Today’s music lover is smart, explores choices and has access to them. Stifling that choice by trying to thrust something down their throat will only cause them to rebel and look elsewhere for what they want. Instead, treat someone who buys music like a star; give them more than just the music and you will have made a fan for life. It is these fans that we need to create and foster.

This brings us to an interesting stage. We have looked at how to get people to buy music and that today anyone can make his music by spending next to nothing. Now what connects these two pieces? The World Wide Web is the perfect platform, where everyone is equal. How interesting you can be has created a whole new breed of content creators and redefined the term ‘creativity’.

The Internet has made this world a much smaller place and fostered interaction and discovery of music across genres, languages and cultures. It has allowed people to find new and interesting music from parts of the world they didn’t even know existed and likewise for musicians, it has opened up a world that never was!

My work in the entertainment industry has centred round Internet radio – so far with my company RadioVeRVe.com. What started as a hobby and ‘finding something to keep me occupied’ during my free time, has turned into a passion to collect and showcase ALL the indie music made in India across genres and languages to the whole world.

Over the past couple of months, I have started to try and implement the ideas that I speak so much about. Through MediaVeRVe, and a lot of very interesting partnerships and collaborations, I hope the idea can be a reality someday.