MUMBAI: It’s becoming increasingly tricky to define Hard Rock Café’s role as a live venue in 2016 in one way. The imbalance between the ‘commercial’ initiatives inclining towards mainstream music and efforts supporting the alternative music scene often has invited criticism from the ‘scenesters’ in Mumbai – the franchise’s oldest home in India. However, credits where it’s due, the venue continues to promote and encourage associations and concepts that, more or less, possess the ability to help the community grow.

Lately, the venue tied up with Sennheiser to organise the finale of the brand’s IP Top 50 Bands, and that’s just one of the examples of the entity’s approach towards covering the ‘competition’ aspect of the music culture. Hard Rock Café (HRC), in its latest move, joined hands with Hungama’s digital extension Artist Aloud for nationwide digital talent hunt. Working on the lines of offering a platform to budding voices in the country, the #IAMALOUD@HRC – an ongoing property with Artist Aloud – will focus on handpicking the best talents to perform at the rock-themed venue.

The initiative has already garnered support from Parikrama’s Subir Malik, Euphoria’s Palash Sen, singer-songwriters Manasi Scott, Shilpa Rao and actor-musician Luke Kenny. These established musicians will help the initiative in choosing the winners. Hard Rock Café, spread across six cities (Mumbai x2, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune), will provide the talents (acts or artists) to utilise the popular venues to showcase their content.

Renowned keyboardist Subir Malik hailed Artist Aloud’s app and the entity’s role since the band signed up with the platform, and called the new initiative “exciting and crazy.” One of the most heard and loved voices in the country, Palash Sen congratulated Artist Aloud’s effort and praised the new step that would help the bands get discovered and recognised. Announcing Artist Aloud as the “cornerstone in independent music space,” Manasi Scott expects some fresh and exciting acts to emerge from its outcome.

The Vice President of Artist Aloud, Soumini Sridhara Paul, said, “Artist Aloud – The App exists to help promote and give independent music a louder voice. With #IMALOUD@HRC we take this initiative, a step further with a nation-wide talent hunt where-in we will give deserving new talent a live stage to voice their sound out loud at an iconic venue like Hard Rock Café.”
Co-Founder & Executive Director of JSM Corporation Pvt. Ltd., Jay Singh, said, “Hard Rock Café is very excited about partnering with Artist Aloud to discover a new wave of talented musicians. We hope that this platform will benefit the musical community for years to come.”