music is sold out , but when the music is available for free around the world from any country , it is a huge advantage . Having so many people listen to your music around the world is a huge deal , thanks to digitalisation . But people do get carried away with the numbers and that ’ s something which is treated as a benchmark . I never understand why it happens because we all know people can buy Google ads and have the numbers pumped up and this is indeed a weird situation . It is like throwing a party and paying the people to come to attend the party ! We come from a different era of CDs and Cassettes , but we always focused on making good music and believed in diverse collaborations such as Shreya Ghoshal , Arijit Singh , Salman Ali or Hansraj Raghuvanshi from Himachal Pradesh that widens the audience . It is definitely a great advantage with digitalisation where music reaches wider horizons than distribution .
Sulaiman : Imagine your song hitting on the very first day in a house in UK , or in Africa or USA . You can do that with the new technology in hand . Imagine sending a cassette or CD outside the country , and you would have to send it 30 days in advance and go through the customs . But now , it is just in a single click , you can release the song in multiple countries in a go and trillions of people can listen to the song .
The numbers aspect will always prevail and the comparison always exists . It is the way we are built as humans and we tend to compete to be better over others . If that ’ s not present , everyone would be listeners and not musicians !
Talking about the independent music scene in India , you have your independent music label Merchant Records and have been promoting fresh talents . How do you select the artists for your record label ? What is the process like ?
Sulaiman : The process is pretty simple . If we listen to a song and like it , we go for it . We have a curation process by listening to the music and we dig into the artist and it is all about understanding the music and taking it further . If the relationship is fruitful with us , we go ahead and every artist is welcome with open arms .
Please tell us about mixing the Lady Gaga Song Born this Way and Judas !
Salim : That was more than a decade back in 2008 . Lady Gaga wanted to do something in India and she was planning to come to India in 2009 . She was already popular in the US and around the world but not that popular in India . Born this Way was the most popular single of hers then and she wanted to an add Indian flavour to the song . I don ’ t call it a remix , they sent us Lady Gaga ’ s vocals and few instruments , but we changed the entire arrangements to make it completely Indian in terms of percussion and multiple layers . It was a nice collaboration and Universal records reached out to us . We did that literally in a day and the song got released just four days later ! It was one of the early releases on YouTube . Back in those days , hitting million was massive and the song did hit the mark quickly . She was involved in the song , the composition was made very organic . It was quite a fun collaboration and happened by sending files over the internet . Earlier , collaborations involved meeting in person and this was quite phenomenal .
Salim : Our criteria is just good music . We don ’ t see how many Instagram followers or YouTube subscribers the artist has . If the composition strikes a chord , the artist is in .
Sulaiman : Numbers might define the talent to some extent but not a main criterion for us .
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