The old is gradually giving way to the new. There was a time stretching from the early 20th century all the way to the early 21st when musicians largely depended on labels as a means to reach their audiences. These labels essentially acted as middle-men, like real-estate brokers who connect landlords to tenants and pocket a slice of the pie. No one really questioned this model because, well, that’s just the way things worked. But then came the Internet, and along with it, streaming apps.  Suddenly, digital music distributors became an alternative vehicle for artistes to reach listeners. Musicians gained a level of independence on platforms like Spotify and YouTube that they didn’t have before. And that independence extended to social media too, with artistes using apps like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok (before it was banned in India) to amplify their growth.

It’s this advent — that of musicians using social media as a tool to release their songs — that has democratised the market to a large extent because here, they don’t even need distributors as they would with streaming apps. Yashraj Mukhate, for example, is a musician who burst onto the scene in February this year with Pawri hori hai, a spoof track he released on Instagram that went so viral that he’s now amassed 2.2 million followers. “There is definitely a shift,” feels Danish Chaudhary, curator for a music streaming app, adding, “It’s quite comparable to the old days when venues and gig promoters would book artistes based on how many people they could get to the show. Now, having a massive fan-following on social media adds to your clout because labels are assessing how you are using these platforms. That has become a screening process.”