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News |  02 Nov 2020 12:42 |  By Namrata Kale

Gaana Launchpad gave a spotlight to Independent artists in India; express musicians

MUMBAI: After empowering artists with a dedicated cloud-based Artist Dashboard to learn more about their fans, Gaana kicked off a new program called ‘Gaana Launchpad’ to bring emerging indie artists in India into the spotlight and showcase their talent.

Handpicked by Gaana’s expert in-house editors, the Launchpad featured a playlist comprising 40 tracks, giving a platform to the most promising independent artists a platform to reach over 185 million users across India. Gaana organised a Gaana Launchpad Night every Thursday at 7 PM. With this Gaana aimed to identify, acknowledge and promote talent that promised to make the future of Indian music landscape an exciting one.

Radioandmusic.com spoke to a few artists who were associated with Gaana Launchpad- Arpit Chourey, Nikhil Swaroop, Srihari Jagannathan who gave some exclusive insights on and much more.

Check below:

. Association with Gaana for Gaana Launchpad

Arpit Chourey: I am quite excited to be a part of this association. It would give me a good set of audiences and spread my music to as many people as possible through the app. Initiatives like these motivate us to write more music and create more songs.

Nikhil Swaroop: I really like the initiative launched by Gaana to give the spotlight to independent artists in India. There is so much talent in this country with some great musicians, so through this initiative, hopefully, independent artist’s music get that reception that mainstream Bollywood music does through platforms like Gaana Launchpad.

Srihari Jagannathan: Gaana has one of the largest listeners base in India and is recognized by them as the most promising artist means a lot to me. With Launchpad we have an amazing opportunity to connect with our audience and take the music one step further. Definitely, a welcome initiative as this is a much-needed platform for indie musicians.

Aswin Adwani: The Gaana team has been really great to work with, we had a lot of fun on the Gaana launchpad live session with several hundred people tuning in and requesting songs. It turned into a relaxed evening with everyone coming together for music which was great.

Experience/challenges working on your music projects during this lockdown?

Arpit Chourey: Lockdown came with a huge set of challenges in terms of working on the music but also was a boon for me. I was finally able to get time to mix and arrange a lot of incomplete songs. The best thing that happened in terms of making demos was that I was able to work with musicians. I normally do and was able to equip and train them in recording their parts at home which they did not do before. Recording correctly is also a skill and a process that live musicians generally miss out on. Since everything happened online, It was better and more productive for me to arrange the songs, mix, and make good demos.

Nikhil Swaroop: The lockdown has given me ample time to write new songs and complete the work in progress tracks. While I do miss performing live it has been fun to record in the studio and put two songs out. Financially it has been difficult for musicians but I am positive that things will get better soon.

Srihari Jagannathan: With lockdown, the concept of live shows and tours went out of scope and half of my band was stuck in different parts of the country. However, this gave me time to explore music that I have created and kept for myself- The lockdown made me come out of my comfort zone and work on releasing these numbers.

Ashwin Adwani: This lockdown has been a time for self-improvement. I’ve been playing gigs for almost two years and haven’t had the chance to really work on my skills, focus on writing new music, or collaborating with other artists. Thanks to this lockdown, I finally had the time and the headspace to do just that. The biggest challenge for me was making music over WhatsApp and Zoom calls. It takes a lot of patience but in the end, when you hear the song in all its glory, it’s all worth it.

Upcoming Projects

Arpit Chourey: I am working on unfinished Hindi tracks which kind of took a backseat in the last few years as I had released two English EPs. Hopefully, I will release Hindi tracks out in the market as soon as possible.

Nikhil Swaroop:  I’ll be releasing my next Hindi single next month which has a very interesting blues-rock vibe to it. Post that I will be releasing some English music which I had written a few years ago that is yet to release. I hope the listeners enjoy my music as I like to make different types of music for all types of listeners as I grew up listening to many genres myself. ''

Srihari Jagannathan: My next song ‘nnilai’; releases on28th of October - Post that with Chennai Street Band, our debut Hindi single will be released by end of November.

Ashwin Adwani: I have been writing and producing a lot of music for myself and in collaboration with other artists, so definitely be on the lookout for that.

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