MUMBAI: Music director, singer and songwriter Gaurav Dagaonkar who is also the co-founder and CEO of Songfest India gave some insight about Songfest Xplore.

He also emphasised How Songfest Xplore is different from any other IP that supports independent music creators and how they select their artists

Check the interview below:

What was your motive to launch Songfest Xplore with diverse independent musical talent from across India?

Songfest India itself was started in 2018 with a dream of creating exciting music with talented artists.  Since the time Songfest came into existence, we have been quite successful in creating several award-winning IPs. While we have worked with established artists like Shaan, Monali Thakur, Nikhil D'souza, Songfest is a platform that believes in giving independent artists or newbies a chance to showcase their talent. The idea for launching Xplore emerged during the pandemic when we saw the effect that the lockdown had on musicians. There were no live gigs and both established and upcoming artists suffered because of it. As a way of helping independent musicians, we thought of creating an IP with a very strong call to action where artists from all over India could send in their original music and find a platform to showcase their talent.

2. How is Songfest Xplore different from any other IP that supports independent music creators?

Songfest Xplore is an open IP where people can approach us directly and submit their original compositions. It is a very supportive and a very welcoming IP. What makes Xplore different is the fact that, unlike other IPs, we don’t ask the artists to bear the cost of producing their tracks or promoting and marketing them. We hand-hold the artists and promote and distribute their tracks using all our resources. In fact, many of the artists were recording their videos for the very first time.

3. How do you select your artists and also tell us about your recording process  

The most important criteria when it came to choosing artists was the quality of their songs. We also looked at the kind of promise an artist shows and how serious they are about music and whether they have that spark. Talent and the love for music is also what counts for us. Out of the 250 entries we received, there were more than 150 exceptional songs which made the evaluation process quite challenging for us. Our team, with their diverse tastes in music, all came together to select the songs and we managed to select a very vibrant bunch of songs to give our listeners a choice.  Take the instance of Sarthak Kalyani, whose song Saahiba stood out from the rest because he is an extraordinary vocalist and composer. Reena Gilbert’s ‘Intezaar Tera’ was very contemporary as the structure of her song had a deep meaning and emotion attached to it. We're also different from others in the way we make sure that our artists are satisfied, and you don't see that a lot. It's mostly the viewers that people are worried about but working with artists over the years and being a creative professional myself, we understand their needs.

4. Share with us the vision of Songfest India for 2022

Xplore will continue over the next few weeks with several promotional campaigns and music videos releasing in line. Songfest is working on releasing a few music videos for its channel as well where we will be collaborating with several influencers and celebrities. The focus would be to generate story-based music videos and to create high-end content with brands and OTTs in the music space. Another important goal that we are setting up for ourselves is to work with at least one or two new artists each week. Over the next year, we would like to work with at least 50 to 100 and explore new talent. Also, with Songfest Xplore Season 2, we aim to track down independent artists in the regional space. There are a few more interesting projects in the music-tech space which are very promising and will boost the creator economy in a big way.