MUMBAI: Canvas Talent, founded by Anurag Rao, has been representing artistes from different creative fields ever since 2006. Rao went on to form Farhan Live with Farhan Akhtar, and the band has been performing internationally for almost two years. Currently, he is also the Artists, Innovations and Repertoire Director of MARD (Men against Rape and Discrimination) initiative launched by Akhtar.

The duo is now ready with their latest venture called FarOut Media, which will be media publishing music rights management and talent development agency. From all the clutter that is in the music industry right now, the goal of FarOut Media stands out in the fact that the organisation is trying to build an artiste centric ecosystem.

Co-founder and CEO of FarOut Media, Rao, said, "We are trying to build something that no one else in the industry is doing. We will be working with a lot of indie artistes. We will try to deploy independent music through different avenues of revenue monetisation, through promotion and distribution."

"Whether it is independent music by itself or collaborative work, we will take the content and put it into platforms like  films, TV commercials, or even through CSR (like they did with MARD’s ‘Chulein Aasman’)," he added.

Rao revealed that they are working with two songs by Leslie Lewis and have licensed them into a film, which is currently in production. Their aim is to take content and then enable the artiste to take it into mainstream revenue markets. Today, music has become an intrinsic player in all kinds of creative fields; brands and organisations are all investing in music.

When asked about what kind of content they are looking for and how it will be curated, Rao said, "It is not genre specific or a particular kind of content. If an artiste has an idea and brings it to us, we will help them work it into a song. Or if they already have a partly existing song, we could help them collaborate with another artiste to finish the song. Also, if they have a fully mastered song, then we will help them register it and put it out into the market."

He further said, "We want to help artistes understand their rights today by representing their work. We also need to educate them in terms of the kind of royalties they are entitled to and how the different societies work. We want to make them aware in a very structured and transparent manner. Not many artistes are aware of their legal rights in the country."

The organisation believes in enabling the musicians and creating an ecosystem that is beneficial to the artistes. They are also working with other artistes like Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonsa, Salim-Sulaiman and are in talks with independent Hindi psychedelic rock band Parvaaz.