MUMBAI: Bollywood seems to be opening doors to independent music with sync deals being one of the mediums. Though a few examples cannot be considered as a trend, this might be the new thing in mainstream cinema. Pentagram’s hit song 'Tomorrow's Decided’ is one of the latest examples that has been synced in the upcoming sequel ‘Rock On 2’. The movie is scheduled to be out around October next year.

Anurag Rao, CEO and co-founder of Farout Media that owns publishing rights for the song spoke about the deal, “The producers felt the need for an English rock track, for a particular sequence. Pentagram is a well-known band and we work with them and felt ‘Tomorrow’s Decided’ was suitable, so we picked it up. We were considering the track ‘Voice’ as well, but then stuck to ‘Tomorrow’s Decided’. This is the first time we will be taking a released track and syncing it into a mainstream Bollywood track.”

Rao intends to push the song out using the movie as a marketing and PR medium which would result into accruing royalties back to the artist. Pentagram has featured in the movie as a rock act. According to Rao it is a rare occurrence that an English independent catalogue track finds itself back into limelight through a mainstream Bollywood movie. “Recently we also synced Rochak Kohli’s song ‘Atrangi Yaari’ for another upcoming movie ‘Wazir’, which initially was to be used as a jingle for an advertisement”, Rao added. Farhan Akhtar and Amitabh Bachchan lent their voice for the track for which is likely to be released by the end of the year.

Farout Media works with artists like Shruthi Hassan and Shankar Eshaan Loy, Farhan Akhtar amongst others, and endeavours to explore sync opportunities for the catalogue they own through mainstream TV, film, sport and advertising. Apart from sync, Rao revealed that his company receives a lot of non-film content which it plans to release via various playlists and platforms in the international market.

With a belief of creating an artist centric/music innovation business model, Farout Media connects artists with brands, broadcasters and advertisers. The idea is to market a song, with a product in the backdrop as opposed to traditional advertising where it was always about the product and the song stays in the background. Consumers who are hooked on to the song also realise that there is a product attached to it, which indirectly markets the product as well.

In this unique business model, the brands/broadcasters/advertisers offset the cost of buying the song for the customer and in return acquire that consumer. The artist gets royalties and the brand gets a consumer. In certain rights or revenue share deals, the brand also makes a particular return on investment when the song is consumed on various digital platforms.

Farout Media has also promoted the song ‘Mutant Macha’ by Chennai based alternate rock band Skrat featuring Vishal Dadhlani and Farhan Akthar, which was used for marketing X-Men 2 TV premiere on Star Movies. The number presold fifty thousand downloads. Similarly the track ‘Tension Kyun Lete Ho Yaar’ composed by Eshaan and Loy, sung by Farhan Akthar was used for Yepme.