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Artist Aloud Wants To Be India's Go-To Indie Music Discovery Platform

The Artist Aloud app was launched in 2016.
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One of the blessings of Internet is that it has made new music and new talent vastly more accessible to listeners as well as to commercial entities. In India, where Bollywood and regional film music still rules the chart, Artist Aloud wants to carve out a niche by promoting indie artists. Launched in 2009, it continues with its mission of becoming the go-to discovery platform for new artists who have not signed up with a commercial label.

Since it was launched by Hungama Digital Media, the digital platform has promoted a lot of talent through shows, gigs, awards and distribution platforms.

"When we started, our goal was just to bring new and fresh talent to the limelight," Soumini Sridhara Paul, VP, Artist Aloud, told HuffPost India. "The goal remains the same but we have opted for a digital way now to expose our platform to more people."

In 2016, Artist Aloud launched an app that streamed indie songs. The Artist Aloud app is also serving as a platform where budding artists can upload their songs, and currently hosts over 500 artists and over 3500 songs.

The app has an option that allows users to log in as an artist, a distributor or a fan. For fans, it is an experience to discover new songs and artists. The Artist Aloud app designers have made sure that it is all about discovering new music. The home carousel stores song titles by featured artists. Then, there are the 'Explore By Theme,' 'Top 20,' and '#IAMLOUD' tabs for newly uploaded songs.

ArtistAloud

One of the app's most innovative features is exploring music by nodes. The app generates a tag cloud related to the song, such as artists, genres, the location of the band, and more. Users can click on any of them and get to more music.

For artists, the app serves as a platform to showcase their songs, offer them for sale, and list their events. They can also directly upload songs through the app.

ArtistAloud

"We are making it easy for artists to upload songs," Paul explained. "Apart from app uploads, we have a portal as well where they can upload high-quality tracks. After that, it goes through the quality test and screening process. If we deem the song to be fit for our platform we release it on the app."

The app also sells artists' songs for ₹10 per song. Users can download the songs that they have purchased.

Paul says that Artist Aloud also helps musicians get onto various distribution platform such as Hungama and market their songs.

"We offer paid solutions to get the artists on board and handle their content in such a way that they would get noticed," she said.

In the past, Artist Aloud has promoted talents such as Salim-Sulaiman and Raghav Sachar. It organizes music gigs at different venues and also hosted a music award for 5 years.

It now wants to expand its digital footprint and reach out to more users. "Our ultimate aim is to accommodate more and more artists. And give them the platform to become great," Paul said.

You can check out the latest songs and the app at the ArtistAloud website.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.