The Indie music scene has been
steadily gaining strength over the years. Indie bands and music are slowly
making inroads into our taste of music, which was previously predominantly
ruled by international or Bollywood music. More and more people are being
exposed to indie music through various mediums like live shows, radio, online
music stores etc. Today we feature ‘OK Listen’ an online music store started by
Vijay Basrur with the vision of bridging the gap between musicians and their
fans.
Born and brought up in Mumbai,
Vijay, has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from WIT, Solapur, and an MBA
from SP Jain. Vijay has a rich experience of working in start-ups and has been
a part of start-ups like Bazee.com, Quikr.com and Synqua Games. “I think the joy of creating something and
seeing a company grow from a small team to a large team is what start-ups
provide”, he says. He believes that creating a good and valuable
proposition which addresses the customers’ needs is what makes a successful start-up.
His experience with start-ups is definitely helping him run his very own
startup, OK Listen.
“I have been a music buff since I was in school”, says Vijay. He
started purchasing music ever since he started working in 1994. Vijay’s love
for music led him to finally start ‘OK Listen’, a single destination for
consumers to discover, sample and purchase music created by independent artists.
The idea to start OK Listen came to him when he wanted to purchase music from
an independent band called ‘Them Clones’. That’s when he realized that artists
were using the Indian postal service to distribute CD’s because they did not
have a trustworthy digital distribution platform. He decided to bridge this gap
between artists and fans and that’s how OK Listen was born.
 |
| Vijay Basrur, Founder OK Listen |
The biggest challenge, however,
was to instil trust and confidence that bands’ music would be in safe hands.
Like any radical idea, a lot of people were initially cynical about an Indian
digital platform.
“We addressed this by
going ahead and building the platform instead of talking about it”, says
Vijay. Over time trust and confidence was built among the Indie bands, there
was no looking back thereafter.
OK Listen was started to create a
truly pro-musician digital platform that musicians could trust and a
destination consumers could come to for discovering music and supporting the
musicians they love. For consumers OK Listen is a platform to discover
independent music and also to support their favourite indie bands. For bands it
provides a platform to sell their music globally. As of now more than 50
artists have joined OK Listen, with more bands coming on board every week.. Bands
get a vanity URL (www.oklisten.com/bandname)
which helps them to promote their music. 70% of the net revenue is shared with
the artists. A transparent pay-out system is also one of the USP of OK Listen.
“Our plan is to get as many artists as possible under a single
destination”, says Vijay about his company’s future plans. He also wants to
offer a wider variety of genres for the users. He believes that there are users
waiting to discover new music and are willing to pay for it. Just that they
don’t have a lot of options now. With the independent music scene gaining more
and more popularity, a platform like OK listen is becoming more important for
people to get access to popular and upcoming bands on the scene. “I think this industry will see a lot more
growth with more inflow of musicians”, he says.
We are proud that a fellow
Mumbaikar is contributing in such a big way to the independent music scene.
Thanks to Vijay and OK Listen, artists and fans have been able to reach out to
each other. And what does this Mumbaikar think about his city? “Lately the city is crumbling under a visible
lack of infrastructure, open spaces and living here seems a lot more difficult
than it used to. Having said that, there is no other city I would want to live
in India other than Bombay”, he says. We agree to you Vijay, there is no
other city worth living in!
No comments:
Post a Comment