MUMBAI: In India music not only plays an important role in cinema, but also plays a very significant role in our day to day lives. Listener’s choice is fast changing as people now have a wide range of choices. Just as the shelf life of almost everything is reducing, the shelf life of music is becoming shorter.
There has been a change in trend of music composition and also its distribution. "People no longer feel the need to own music, they are just concerned with consuming it, therefore there has been a change in music retailing patterns," said Big music and home entertainment CEO Kulmeet Makkar.
Music is the first glimpse an audience gets into a movie on the basis of which he forms an opinion about the movie. Music is released almost 45 days prior to a movie’s release and the number of platforms on which it releases has increased. As a result, there has been a dip in physical sales, which has spread laterally across digital platforms, legally and illegally.
Mobile Entertainment Forum-Americas chairman emeritus and founder Ralph Simon said, "Digital platforms such as caller back tones, ring tones, download etc are gaining tremendous importance, therefore while composing music, music directors should think of short tunes and clippings which can be popularized."
Music directors and bands from across the world now use social networking sites to connect with like minded people. Myspace.com has as many as one million bands.
Music director Salim said, "We hardly have a music industry, we have a film industry and music is created for that. There is a need to create non-film music and pop stars who are as big as film stars. We need educational institutions to learn instruments such as piano and violin." Suleman further added, "Music plays are very important role in our movies, therefore nobody wants to take a risk and we have very few people who believe in their conviction."
To combat the changing trends in music and to recover from the depression of dip in physical sales, the industry has a great potential in exploiting mobile handsets as a savior of the music industry and to fight piracy.
