#LifeIsMusic: Introducing the country’s newest platform for original music talent

In an ever-growing spiral of sources that musicians can turn to for showcasing and promoting their work, finding that raw inspiration within a sea of talent has always been a challenge. In the quest to discover the musicians that are most skilled at their artform--spanning amateur to accomplished--#lifeismusic is a combination of reality show and web-based platform whose primary aim is to enable artistes to showcase their work.

We speak with Debashish Ghosh, Chief Knowledge Officer, Technology and Digital Strategy - EsselGroup, who walks us through the overriding concept behind #lifeismusic and the intriguing space it aims to fill for music in India.

Tell us about lifeismusic: what is it, who is it aimed at and where do you want to take it to?

Before we begin, firstly it is “hashtag lifeismusic” [smiles]: that’s the brand name, and it is hosted on lifeismusic.in. Before we get to the website and what it’s meant for etcetera, the whole concept emerged from the fact that music--music as we see it in its traditional form--is mostly about vocal music, and musicians always play a secondary or support role. But the fact remains that the best music composers, arrangers and musicians, all of whom make music happen--make those vocals happen--are the ones who work behind the scenes as far as consumer sentiment and awareness is concerned. Not very many of us--unless in the case of very big musicians--know of the millions of musicians who play very good music and actually strive to entertain consumers all the time. And their cause, proposition and skill is pretty much unknown except in the circles where they operate.

Secondly, in reality shows--non-fiction shows that various television channels host or even musical programs or contests that happen--are all around either singing or dance. We’ve never had musicians competing against each other while composing original music. So the whole thought process was, ‘How do we create a platform for people who are really interested in original music and not necessarily listening to Bollywood music or popular music only?’ In original music--Indian classical and fusion of jazz, blues, rock etc--the awareness of this genre of music is growing significantly. It’s what we call ambient, chillout or fusion for example. And people are beginning to enjoy that form of music primarily because it’s new, every composition is new. Even when you play the composition again, because it is instrumental there are nuances that come in as new.

Debashish Ghosh Chief Knowledge Officer, Technology and Digital Strategy - EsselGroup

 

It might be a little premature, but directionally we want it to be the YouTube of original music: not the YouTube of music videos.

So in the era of original content creation, original content production, original movies, original music, we thought bringing in the element of an original music show which is essentially instrumental music only, keeping in mind the fact that it would highlight the talent and ability of various known as well as amateur musicians along with people who are interested in music, that’s what the platform is all about ultimately. Although we are starting off the platform with a show which we are calling #lifeismusic, that’s just the beginning of the platform.

That’s the reason why we didn’t make it into a show and put it up on any one of our existing platforms. We actually chose a separate platform for it. We chose to take the arduous route of building this platform, getting people to know about this platform and so on primarily because this is not a one-time proposition. In our minds, it’s the concept of original music, the concept of creating unplugged versions of different forms and genres of music and entertainment. This is something that should ideally happen throughout the year. 24x7 if possible. So while we are launching with this particular show--and I’ll talk to you about the show in a bit--the platform is all about curated instrumental music across genres. Therefore when we say curated, we’re not necessarily putting up our own content here--there’s a whole lot of content that is available on YouTube--people have to search for it to find the best performance of a particular artiste or a good composition or piece that’s been played. So lifeismusic.in aims to be that one-stop shop where a connoisseur of music can come and consume thousands of different forms of musical performances and primarily drive toward creating an exclusive platform for musicians.

So it might be a little premature, but directionally we want it to be the YouTube of original music: not the YouTube of music videos. Although the platform will contain videos and audio formats, this is not the music video that you know of. This is actual, original unplugged music that you’ve never heard before, it’s music that is played spontaneously. So we’re also going to invite--as we go along--amateur musicians all over the world to come and contribute their music to the platform while we choose and curate the best music on the platform. We’re going to be reaching out to live performances that happen in India as well as abroad potentially--again of the instrumental variety--but shoot those live performances and stream them live or as VOD or both depending on the availability of rights etc. Essentially move towards creating a big platform where somebody like you and me who is interested in music can come down and watch and get entertained with new forms of music.

Also, because we want this to be a holistic music-related platform, we are also showcasing making-of and behind-the-scenes interviews with musicians irrespective of whether they are established or amateur musicians. We are showcasing information about musical instruments, trivia around instrumental music, backgrounds on forms of music etc. It isn’t just a platform for music consumption alone; it becomes a platform for understanding instrumental music better. Also a platform that encourages musicians at all stages of their genesis to participate and put up their stuff. Ideally we’d want it to be a showcase platform for amateur, budding musicians who want to make a mark. Ideally if this platform grows to become something big tomorrow, maybe music directors who are looking for fresh talent would come on to this platform to choose who would play the drums or bass or the lead guitar or a classical instrument in their next music piece.

Therefore we are not restricting it to a particular instrumental form. The whole focus is concerned with driving as much fusion as possible as this allows people to enjoy all forms of music at one go. It also allows individual talents within a group to be showcased as well. That’s what the platform is all about: it’s a mobile-responsive site so you could consume all of these videos on your mobile or on the website, and we’ll see as we go along what other functionalities we can adapt it to.

Will this platform be one that amateur musicians can come to, or will the platform reach out to them?

Both ways. In fact we would actually prefer if all forms of amateur musicians put up their content on the platform. It would a) bring more diversity, b) allow different instruments and musicians to showcase their talent and c) allow people to choose the musician they want to pick up thereafter. Most importantly, it is not just a one-way platform; it is an interactive platform where we want people to put up content, however we would be doing significant levels of curation, rather selection, where we want a certain quality of content to go up here. That’s the most important focus. While we want everybody to contribute, quality is important. When we’re saying quality we’re not saying video quality because it’s about music; so long as the music sounds good and interesting and exciting, we would showcase them irrespective of where the artiste comes from and what level of competence the artiste is at that point in time.

So somebody who’s a 3-year-old could technically upload an interesting video of him or her playing, to somebody who’s 30 years old to somebody who’s 60. We don’t care. So long as the musical quality is good, it works both ways.

Do end users need to upload their work to the platform, or do they share existing work they may have uploaded to YouTube or any other media sharing site?

We have a functionality call ‘Share a video’ on the platform where you can upload your own video or upload a link where your video is hosted. Essentially it’s just a way to let us know that it’s your video you want us to take a look at and these of course would come into the overall basket from where the best ones would be shortlisted. This is something we’ll start doing once the #lifeismusic show is over. Right now we’re starting this show from 15 June, and it’s a seven-week show. Every week there will be almost 20-odd videos uploaded including the behind the scenes etc, almost every alternate day. So 3-4 times a week. We would then keep #lifeismusic on and allow others to come on board and then we would go looking for people who are good performers, including the ones who have performed.

There are 12 amateur, budding musicians who have performed for the show and they were selected through social media and other various routes. We didn’t open this to any and everybody as we didn’t want to sieve through lower-quality content. We handpicked very good quality musicians because we want to set a benchmark: anybody who pushes in content tomorrow looks at that benchmark and decides, ‘I’m good as these guys and am ready to put up content there’. So yes--we will take both videos and audio as well as links to video or audio that they have hosted anywhere. That’s not a problem. If you see on the site we’ve already started off curating and putting up content from YouTube that we feel is relevant, and we’re putting this under the #lifeismusic recommends section.

Debashish Ghosh Chief Knowledge Officer, Technology and Digital Strategy - EsselGroup

 

It isn’t just a platform for music consumption alone; it becomes a platform for understanding instrumental music better.

Is the platform meant to include sounds largely from India, or is it meant to extend to other geographies as well?

The platform is meant to be a world music platform. It’s not going to be exclusively sounds from India at all. In fact that’s the reason why we started with the show #lifeismusic as a world music/fusion platform. We also wanted to bring in some sort of ‘massiness’ to the whole thing instead of it being very genre-specific. We will have India-specific content, international content, amateur content, local bands playing, professional musicians playing--all of it. It is a digital platform so there is no geographical boundary that we aim to look at. Although it is an India-based platform, that really means nothing at this point, simply because a whole host of world musicians are looking these days to be well-known in India, and Indians are getting far more today aware of world music and musicians over the world.

At the end of this journey, what is the end-game; what would you want to see the platform becoming?

The end-game is effectively building a community of music lovers. When I say music lovers it is a specific category of music lovers because we’re not covering vocal, at least not right now. Therefore people who love instrumental music, original compositions, fusion and world music, those who love ambient/chill platforms, that’s the niche of music lovers we want to aggregate on our platform and hopefully give them regular doses of fresh content even after the show is over so that it becomes habit-forming to a certain extent. It also becomes a one-stop place where you don’t need to search--that’s the value. We take over the responsibility of showcasing good content every day and you get your daily dose of good music without you having to explicitly look for it. You can always search on the platform but the whole idea being that if you’re looking to listen to a composition again or you want to listen to a new composition, both are going to be available on the platform going forward.

The way I see it, at least 2-3 videos of good music performances should go up on the platform once the show is over, and then we take it from there. When we say instrumental music and musicians, we don’t mean just the bands and the musicians themselves; we mean the entire ecosystem of people who belong to that genre. I wish ideally there should be a scenario where people who are budding composers or people who are established music arrangers find value in the content here, both in the context of figuring out what’s new, what’s working, what people are liking, and also from the context of finding people who can drive and give good quality.

...from the mentors to the mentee...

That entire spectrum, right. Including people who are influencers, not just those who are mentors and mentees: somebody who is a talent scout for example, or somebody who is a musical show organizer, or even corporate or private shows where people are looking for quality musicians.

So the whole idea is to let consumers at large be exposed to the plethora of content and talent that exists in as much as #lifeismusic can take them, and position it accordingly. That’s ultimately the end game.

Learn about the platform, meet the musicians, catch the webisodes and experience the energy behind #lifeismusic here: www.lifeismusic.in