MUMBAI: In the recent years, music in India has taken a major shift in terms of taste of the audience. Bollywood isn’t the only music that the Indians love and know anymore, the fresh blood of the nation has more to offer musically. At this juncture, Nrtya, an endeavour to promote music and art across a diverse spectrum of audiences initiated an independent music label to release and push fresh sounds being created by talented, independent musicians in the country.

One of the founding members of Nrtya, Parth Taco said, “It signifies the cosmic dance of life and draws inspiration from the interplay of dynamic and static divine energy flow, containing the five principles of eternal energy - creation, preservation, destruction, illusion and emancipation. Our belief is that art is in its purest form a quest for meaning, which is a journey that artists undergo perpetually in their process, of the creation of art, and evolution as artists. We aim to showcase this journey and have audiences undergo the same.”

The emerging label started off in March this year with its founding members Sharan Punjabi, Parth Taco and Raghu Vamshi.The start up currently comprises of these founding members and they are managing 10 artists. They are scheduled to release music by more than 11 artists over the next two months and many more after that in the coming months. "The goal is to increase the percentage of listeners that consume Indian music; ergo music being produced by Indian musicians as we feel the music space has reached that level where it's on par, if not better, with international standards,” explained Taco.  

On the promotional techniques, he said, “Our policy is based on marketing and content generation for our artists so as to have the ideal collaborations between multiple parties. We follow the conventional modems of promotions, via gigs, publications, other forms of generic promotions but our premier strategy is to generate genuine marketing content. We don't have any association with YouTube or Wink music. For most of our artists, the music is distributed via TuneCore which distributes in multiple stores including iTunes and Spotify. We have music for most of our artists distributed on Bandcamp as well.”   

Nrtya has been receiving a spectacular response from the people from across the country. When asked how about the audience he added, “The audience response to our events and releases has been phenomenal and has given us great impetus and inspiration to continue working diligently towards furthering independent music by upcoming artists from the country. There really seems to be a demand for events that drive social impact via various art forms.”

Highlighting the marketing aspect he stated, “The marketing of our events is based on curation of unique experiences for audiences and content generation that promotes artists that are pushing the envelope on creativity among the artist communities. One of our primary goals is to generate societal impact via art. That's a huge boost to marketing in itself.”

Nrtya which has no sponsors at this moments aims to collaborate with upcoming film makers to build an organic cross pollination of multiple artistic fields including film, music, art, writers etc.

Having a start-up has its own ups and downs and Nrtya is currently on that roller coaster. “It is difficult to enter an industry with high levels of market saturation. However, we have been fortunate with the strengths of our concepts and diversity of operations from the get go.”  

Overall the label aims to propagate culture and evolve an appreciation for music and the diverse spectrum of arts in the country. The defining characteristic of Nrtya is its primary focus on building a patronage for the arts among a wider demographic in a bid to substantially expand and build the listening culture in the country. The scope of its operations is over a long term timeline, evolving the scale of its activities while forming an identity synonymous with that of showcasing exceptional content generated by phenomenal, homegrown artists.

“Our belief is that the arts have the capacity to serve a higher purpose. Which is to provide a profound sustenance in the quest for meaning. That quest is a journey that an artist undergoes. Continually challenging oneself to create. The result of that journey is the creation of a work of art, which takes that artist as well as the audience through a metamorphic journey. We wish to share and have as large as an audience undertake those journeys. To do so we have begun an online independent music label, and one of the modules of its activities is the weekly release initiative,” stated Taco.

Through this initiative, Nrtya aims to provide upcoming as well as established artists, a common platform and outlet for their music, to build an expanding listener base and to have an audience that has a singular, updated point of reference for finding the premier independent music from Indian artists. “With this initiative, we hope to build a community of artists across multiple arts that can collaborate, inspire and draw inspiration from one another as well as combine their listener base which can experience their creations.”

Nrtya also has plans of expanding with multiple unique events that provide unique experiences to audiences.