Vikram Mehra on the Business of Music in the Age of Algorithms
What can the music industry can teach us about the future of media?
In Episode 15 of The Media Room, media journalist and author Vanita Kohli-Khandekar talks to Vikram Mehra, Managing Director of Saregama, one of India’s oldest and most iconic music labels, about how the business of music is evolving in the digital age. From reviving nostalgia with the Carvaan to investing in generative AI with IIT Bombay, Mehra outlines how Saregama is balancing tradition and innovation to stay culturally relevant and commercially competitive. He unpacks the shifting economics of music—from free to paid models, the growing importance of short-form video, and the role of labels in ensuring discoverability in an algorithm-dominated world. They also discuss why Gen Z craves authenticity over archetypes, how AI could reshape talent scouting and content creation, the risks of echo chambers, and the urgency for Indian media businesses to embrace risk and serendipity. Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation on what the music industry can teach us about the future of media.
NOTE: This transcript is done by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on [email protected].
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TRANSCRIPT
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar (Host): Saregama is India's oldest music company. It sits on 1.7 lakh songs in 23 languages. Think of all the music from this up to the 70s and 80s almost 99 percent was recorded on Saregama.
So everything from Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi to Sehgal and Mukesh and everybody we know. 803 crores, it is also one of India's largest music companies. It makes a bulk of its revenues by licensing its songs, its music to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, to all the platforms there are.
But the biggest game changer, of course, is that it also makes movies and web series, but the bulk of its revenues come from music licensing. The big game changer that Saregama did in recent years was a product called Carvaan, which brought the pleasure of physical music back into play for many people in the older generation who did not want to deal with streaming. And Carvaan in many ways revived and rejuvenated Saregama.
But going forward, Saregama is doing a whole lot of other things. And I wanted to speak to them not because it is the oldest music company, but also because music is a petri dish of everything that happens to the media business. So when MP3 hit the music business in 2000, it hit the rest of the video business also some years later.
Whatever happens to the music business today, happens to the rest of the media business tomorrow. And that is why I decided to have a chat with Vikram Mehra, Managing Director of Saregama.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Hi Vikram, welcome to the media room.
I know you don't give many interviews, you said that to me just before this interview. So thank you, really, really gratified you could be with us today. First of all, India's largest, oldest media music company has, you know, 1.5 lakh songs.
Vikram Mehra: 1.7 lakh.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: 1.7 lakh. Last I looked, it was 1.5 lakh songs. You've got the best library there is in the business.
Where is Saregama today? Just give my listeners a sense of where the company stands today in the Indian music ecosystem.
Vikram Mehra: Yeah, first let me acknowledge right now. Yes, I don't give too many interviews. Every time I talk to you, it's different.
See, Saregama is such a fact right now that under Gramophone Company of India, Saregama was the first music label to start business in India in 1992. And that's a time from which we people are recording music. But the big transition that has happened over the last decade or so is that instead of just being a catalogue IP company that owns some of the best catalogue of this country, we have now become a new age entertainment company, which is not just investing in audio, but equally going out there investing in video and live events business.
We believe that the customer, the way the customer is evolving, the clear cut lines between I will listen only to music or I will watch only video, they're all diffusing. So we want to be the ultimate source of content for any platform that wants to go back and engage with Indians, Indians living outside India, also the diaspora, and the larger Southeast Asian community, both in terms of audio, video and live events.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But right now, your footprint is largely Indian or?
Vikram Mehra: It's largely Indian. So we will continue focusing on the Indian languages primarily. But the power is that the number of people who enjoy Indian music, Indian music right now in the languages is over 2 billion, which means right now you're talking to anything between 25 to 30% of the world's population that listens to our music.
And this is when the music has not even got itself exposed to the non Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi speaking audiences, we have seen what Spanish has done, and we believe eventually something similar is going to happen through Indian content too. And that's a kind of soft power. India is a country and we are one of the companies which is taking a pole position and that hopes to have in the days to come.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know, you you said something which I was going to ask about later, but I'm going to collapse, they're becoming very big, you know, I see them a lot in live events, whether it's Diljit Dosanjh and Ed Sheeran, and of course, Sapphire, which I'm bingeing on right now. But what, but there is a larger sort of strategy or there's a larger repercussion to it. Could you take my audience to that?
Because you're, you're basically expanding your market, you're moving across language, you're crossing music over, from what I understand.
Vikram Mehra: Yes. So let me talk about collage. Remember 10 years, 15 years back, there was this entire wave in the food industry of fusion.
Not all fusion works. And when you do fusion for the heck of doing fusion, it typically backfires. We're now evolving into the state that some of the restaurants are genuinely able to do a good fusion and are doing well.
I think India has gone through its own journey for the last five, seven years, where collabs were happening right now, just to say that a collab has happened. At the end of the day, our customers are people like you and me, we don't care if what is a larger corporate interest or the interest of the artist, we want a good song. The song you're talking about is Ed Sheeran, Arijit. I think it's a great song.
There have been a lot of collabs that have happened just before this, nothing has worked, but this song has hit the ball out of the park and full marks to them. So collaboration is a great way in which you expose fans of one or audiences of one artist to the other one. Collabs are also happening to ensure that the Gen Z end up listening to Gen X music and Gen X end up listening to Gen Z music.
That's also a collab opportunity only right now, right? Collabs are happening across languages, collabs are happening across cultures, so that people just get more exposed to the stuff. And it's not just happening on the music side, not just with the Western artists, there are a lot of collaboration opportunities sitting in right now with the Korean and the Japanese artists too.
There are large music loving audiences living there too. A country like ours, which has been pushing music for such a long time, you feel a little silly that the size of our industry is so little and more importantly, the audiences outside India have not fully got exposed to our music and our content. It's not just an audio story, I have an equally big problem on the video side too.
Our film industry or TV series industry, yes, we are very happy with this 2 billion population that we are catering to. But I think there's an opportunity to go beyond that too. Though I still feel I don't think we have serviced our 2 billion properly yet.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know, you're touching upon all the questions which I've got.
Vikram Mehra: I'm so happy about this.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Because see this 2 billion thing, this really bothers me. If you look at the music business, which is your part of, and you've been part of the DTH industry, part of the broadcast industry, so you've seen all these businesses at close quarters. You finally, I think it de-grew by 2% or something.
If I take EY figures, the fact is all these streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple, you know, T-Series is the number one on YouTube globally and all sorts of things happen. But ultimately, it's a 5,000 crore market. It doesn't increase.
What will help, you know, I don't know, at views, where are we, or at audio streaming. But we do not seem to be, it doesn't seem to be expanding the market, the long and short. What is your mind?
Vikram Mehra: See, two, three triggers are going on in the market. One, we're at the cusp, I believe right now, massive expansion happening in. The music industry globally started de-growing from 2000 onwards, when piracy became rampant.
Something very historical happened around 2014, 2015, whereby people's consumption of content moved from their laptops, which was browser-based consumption, to devices, which became app-based. This changed the entire paradigm of piracy, because when it was browser-based, the content used to be served from servers that were used to sit outside India. And we had a tough time going back and controlling piracy.
The same was the situation with our peers in other parts of the world. In the app economy, the good part is that we can always go back and request Apple and Google to ensure that infringing apps are pulled down. What that resulted in is, once again, the music industry started growing, both in the US and India.
The timing is similar 2014-15 onwards, you see a growth going up. The biggest trigger there of the revenue numbers coming in the western world is subscription. If you look at any of my global peers, 65-70% of their revenues today are coming as a share of the subscription money that streaming platforms like Apple or Spotify or Amazon are making.
In India, subscription is yet to take off. There's a fight I've been having right now from Tata Sky days onwards. People used to tell me at that time too that nobody's going to pay for more money.
When we launched Tata Sky in 2006, the cable rates were some 150 odd and we were straight away coming at 250-300 price point. The thing was nobody will go back and pay. Why should people pay?
Indians are conjured. That's something I always challenge. It's a lazy marketeer who keeps on saying that people will not pay for anything right now apart from pricing. Big brands wouldn't have never got built right now if pricing was the only criteria in which you can go back and sell.
You need to convince customers about something bigger they can get and people are ready to pay. Indians are paying for all forms of luxury, all forms of good quality today. Why will they not go out there and pay for music?
The key part is we need to stop giving music free. Streaming applications have done a great service by ensuring that customers instead of going to pirated sites or even trying to go back and download sideload pirated content are very happy coming to these apps and consuming music on a legal basis. A great job has been done.
I believe the time is now right that all of them should now transition to a paid service. A paid service we are still talking of a monthly rate which should be less than 100 rupees per month. Some of the international companies I believe make that flaw of saying that we can charge 3-4 dollars.
If the US can pay 8-10 dollars why can't India pay 3-4 dollars? I don't think India is a 3-4 dollar market. I think India is a dollar market.
Keep it under 100 bucks. If we can launch a stream today. There are only two free guys who are there in the market left.
There is Spotify and there is Jio Savan. Both of them are doing a great job. Both of them need to go back and say no more free.
The free service is going to have a lot of friction. Let's go out there and push for a paid service and if the paid service is under 100 bucks. I believe in a time frame of anything between 18 to 36 months you can have 100 million customers paying 100 bucks per month in this country for music.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Are you seeing that? Are you having that conversation?
Vikram Mehra: We are having this conversation. What I can tell you is the growth rate of subscription is massive in India but the problem is the base is still very very small. So it's not making a right now to the top lines or the bottom lines of each of the music labels or the platform but the growth is there.
All that needs to be done is we need to shut the free tab.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: How many subscribers are there currently?
Vikram Mehra: Not a liberty to go back and check but the numbers are still very very small. But they are growing rampantly but this is not a place for 10, 20, 30 million. This is India.
Any number less than 100 million right now what are we doing? I think a lot of confidence comes to me right now with this fabulous job that Jio All Star has done by growing the number so substantially even if the numbers are a combination of fully paid and bundles even then I think a creditable work has happened. It tells you people have the affordability and they have the inclination to pay.
Somebody needs to get the right proposition in. You asked once more, is the listenership going up? In India actually, the listenership of music has gone up substantially because with this music available at the touch of a button anytime you are wherever you are, has made music that much more accessible.
Also the Gen Z right now that we are seeing are people who like to spend a lot of time with themselves. Nuclear families are a way of life right now. Within nuclear also most Gen Z kids will like to be on their left to their own.
Music becomes their constant companion whether they're studying, going to the gym, going to the school, everywhere music becomes their companion. So I believe that there is a market chitting in. These two platforms and I'm sure they will move in that direction which should just go back and make their free service pretty sad right.
They need to put a lot of friction in it the way it's done in the US and you will see the paid substitution taking off in a very big and substantial fashion. That for me is the biggest growth driver that's gonna come. The second driver that I believe drives the number one I believe is a matter of year right there right there on the horizon.
The second part right now which I believe can become a big changer for music and for the video part is the short format apps that we people have in the country. Instagram, YouTube shots and eventually if and when TikTok ever comes back to the country. All of these are taking a lot of eyeballs of television and at times of some of the long format content and putting the eyeballs onto this scrolling thing that is happening.
My belief is that a large amount of advertising money will start chasing this very very soon. Advertising money chases eyeballs. Eyeballs are shifting out here.
The day these people start opening up themselves fully to advertising a large share of that should get shared with the content creators. That way the short format will also make that much more money.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You'll have to explain this to me. You're saying because the short format from what I understand is useful for marketing but a song will at least be three to five minutes long.
Vikram Mehra: I understand right now it's a double-edged part. If I go back and see the total amount of my content consumption happening in short format a very small portion is for the newer content which is very useful from the marketing and discovery perspective but there's a large amount of consumption which is happening right now for the older content. People are expressing themselves on this world of social media.
Everybody is an artist, an actor, a director who he or she wants to put themselves out and they want the right kind of music to be put up out there. We believe this has made these platforms very powerful and they should fully open themselves up to advertising the way YouTube does a brilliant job right now. How does the YouTube economy work?
YouTube is incentivising creators to put up the best possible content on YouTube. Whatever money YouTube makes they fairly share that money right now with the content creators in themselves. I believe a similar model is on the anvil right now for short format apps too.
The concept is the same. It is UGC which is coming in which is being put up. The moment people get started and see right now that they can make money by putting up high quality content, even better quality content will start coming to short format apps.
Eyeballs are chasing it. I think advertising money can become huge and all content creators music and video all are going to benefit out of it and so will the platform.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But don't you see there isn't a contradiction because you're saying the subscription part first part of expansion is subscription and second part of expansion is the free ecosystem but on shorts.
Vikram Mehra: 1.4 billion people in this country . When you ask right now you should ask somebody working in a small European country that your size is this much. In this country all I am taking on a subscription is 100 million max 200 million.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Smartphone 650 million.
Vikram Mehra: 650 to 750 whatever number you go back and take. So 1.4 or 1.5 billion whatever number we take off our country there's still a massive headroom for smartphones. After smartphones digital consumption goes in there within that there is a money to be made both for subscription and advertising.
So this is something my ex-boss Uday Shankar used to go back and say there is a market both for subscription and advertising in this country. You cannot have this one way of looking at the stuff here is that I will do only advertising based stuff for subscription based stuff. I believe both have got a large amount of headroom.
Enough. YouTube has proved to us that if you put good quality content there is advertising money that chases that because eyeballs are sitting in and out there and companies can make a good amount of money.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know what you just said, I will ask a similar question. What has streaming done to this business? And not just you know if I look at over the years since MP3 came let's say 2000 when you with the era you're talking about was when MP3 and that peer-to-peer networks thing happened.
But it has changed and you're absolutely right everybody wants to become a creator, everybody wants to be a storyteller or a musician and be out there. So streaming has changed the essential nature of the entertainment business and they say that music is a petri dish of the media and entertainment business globally because it's the lowest bandwidth product. So you know all the experiments they hit music first whether it's AI or any technology.
Vikram Mehra: After porn.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Okay that's true. But what has it done and there are various variables in my head but I want your first take. What has streaming done to this business to its ability to create and its ability to reach people?
Vikram Mehra: See I think the biggest part is on the second side. One, it has allowed anybody in this world to access any piece of content sitting in any part of the world. I very often share this example and I've shared with you also in the past. When I was younger , I think I was 13 or 14.
I had this massive crush on somebody and that's when I was exposed to Barsad ka music on medium wave and I was like a big time set in my head here that I need to have this Barsad ka cassette. I was in Lucknow city at that particular time. I was growing up there.
I could not find Barsad ka cassette in the entire city at that time.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Which Barsaat?
Vikram Mehra: This is Raj Kapoor Barsaat.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Not Bobby Deol Barsaat.
Vikram Mehra: Original right? That's a song right now and my mom used to play medium wave all throughout. I grew up on this music and for me somewhere in that state of mind that I was in, that this song just clicked and my thing is can I get this cassette right now to go back and play and I could not for the love of money find that cassette.
I had to finally take help of my cousin who was in Delhi to send that cassette across to me. All that is history now. Today even if I want to listen to Simon and Gawfunkle or want to go back and listen to something sung by Mukesh at any time I have to just go back and press a button.
Suddenly it's so accessible that people are consuming that much more content now. Second , because access is much easier and all content being put up is quality checked, it has given a massive dent to this issue of piracy. I've been through that era before joining Saregama where I have downloaded pirated content right now from the songs pk.pk was a big thing at that particular time. Nobody does it today because what's your need? If you can get every song right now of the high quality there fidelity sitting in an app I'll go back and consume it. So I think streaming has done a great service to the industry per se.
Digital has done one more service out here which is not just streaming part of it. Digital overall has removed the barriers for a very talented person to go back and showcase his or her talent. In earlier days when we used to be sent across by younger artists their content they used to put it on a cassette or later a cd and send it across to us.
The fact of life was by the time it reached the Saregama office somebody had to take the pain of putting the cd in to listen to the music then write a letter to that individual to say it was not fun in your song you can change it. Now people send it on a single through a link. We go back and access it over that link on a literally real-time basis and can go out and give feedback. It has also democratised the artist community.
It's no longer all about who is that much well connected. It is about who has got more talent and I'll leave the talent part. Now talent definition sorry I'm digressing out here but this is an important point I want to make.
In the music industry the only talent that mattered was your voice. How good you are as a singer or a composer or you were writing. Today it's an equally important part.
How good are you emotively selling yourself on these digital platforms like Instagram and YouTube shots. Can you go back and build a community which goes back and follows you equally. The dynamics have gone back and changed.
There's a positive side and there's a negative side to everything that comes in. We, Kishore ji and Rafi sahib. Mahindra Kapoor sahib's face was not important at that time.
Everyone remembers. All the fans know. So because they are constantly connecting with their fans through the digital media.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: So the process of creation and the process of consumption has changed.
Vikram Mehra: And of marketing. Creation, marketing, consumption everything has undergone a massive change. So change is only constant.
There are good things that come with change and there are not so good things that come with the change. Not so good means whatever used to work earlier may not work. That's why people of my age think it's not so good.
I think it's just that time keeps changing and you have to move along with that. It's a different rule of engagement that has become active now in this world of digital. But on an overall basis I think it's done more good to the industry than harm to the industry.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know but you're absolutely right. But there is a deluge. I hate the word content.
And then you say okay I'll make shots and I'll you know put them on Insta and I'll do this and you that thing off. And companies use it. Everybody uses it.
And I remember this conversation I just recently had with this head of music for YouTube globally, Lior Cohen. And he says many artists simply get lost in creating this. He dement reels.
He says what they should be focussing on is the sound they are creating. The music they are creating. If they focus on that then everything else will come.
Is that true? Does that hold? Because you know this is a little bit of a strange situation.
Vikram Mehra: When we were young, our parents used to say, son just study. If you get good marks then everything will happen. There's nothing wrong.
That's still true. But now we are realising that if you want to go back and apply and succeed in the corporate life or in your own setup or get an admission in the top round of college, marks are very important but there are other things also. Extracurriculars matter that much.
How you present yourself matters that much. Only one skill is not going to go back and help. The same thing is happening here.
If you're a singer, voice is the most important part. If you don't know how to sing well right now, you are not going to get fans. That's the basics.
But it's given. Without that you can't break out. People will find that you're not a great singer.
But there is something that is needed beyond that too. What it has done is it has allowed more and more people to now raise their hand and say I am also a singer. Which wasn't possible before.
But that also means that there's a lot of crowd and you need to stand out. Which has redefined the roles of companies like ours. Earlier our biggest role used to be to ensure distribution of content happens.
Today distribution of content is a relatively easy part. Anybody can record and put something up. Today the real part is can your content get packaged in a fashion that it stands out and then gets marketed in a fashion that more and more people sample it and give it a fair listen.
So discoverability is a bigger challenge right now where labels have started going. From distribution we have moved to discoverability as the primary role of a music label today. Discoverability comes in everything.
It comes in grooming, packaging and marketing. All of that is helping right now people to discover that talent.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: How do you ensure discoverability? Is there an example you can share?
Vikram Mehra: How do you break through? Every artist. See what we've also realised is with the younger generation they appreciate people who are true to themselves.
So the older me would have gone back and said there are archetypes and every artist should fit into their archetypes because the archetypes are what goes back in sales. What we have realised at Sarigama over the last few years is that archetypes don't necessarily work any longer because fake stuff is coming out that much easier. In earlier days when you used to see a celebrity it used to be a music video or two videos in a year or a person used to be seen in a movie once or twice or thrice in a year and all of them are doing an act there.
Now everybody is there on social media on a 24 by 7 basis. The more popular you become, the more people chase you. It's very difficult to put up an act at all times and people see through that. So our entire way of building up a singer or an artist based brand is about being as true to that artist as possible and whatever the strengths of that artist are magnify them that much more.
So if somebody is a green flag boy you cannot make that individual. So let me give an example without taking the name of an artist of mine. So when we were looking at it we realised that if a younger boy has to be put up we should make him this really bad boy because bad boys come out there and work too very very well with this TG that we are talking about.
Traditionally we have seen right now bad boy imagery typically attracting younger female audiences a lot. Two things happened: one Gen Z researcher came back and said maybe this definition is no longer valid. Second, the boy we had in mind right now we were positioning at that time was a typical green flag boy and we realise right now if we try to make him do things that don't come natural to him.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: What is a green flag boy? Please excuse me.
Vikram Mehra: Now we are asking if a green flag boy is a boy right now which has got all that this is a Gen Z slang by the way which has got everything which can be ticked marker right now right. What in our language used to say jisko ghar pe jaake mummy se milaya jayega. He is not that bear chested, cigarette smoking, drinker guy.
He is that kind of a person right. And we had debates in our system at that time that listen should we go with an archetype or should we go with what is natural coming to what's coming naturally to this guy and we move towards saying we will go back and be as honest to the individual that we people are working on and I am realising the brand is becoming far stronger because we are showing the natural self of that individual at all times.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Why can't you name the singer?
Vikram Mehra: He is a young kid right now. I don't want him to come under pressure.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know but the deluge and this is something which occupies me a lot. I read up a lot on this. The fact is also that yet streaming has not got equitability.
So it has democratised access. It has democratised distribution but it hasn't democratised revenues clearly because talent is not democratic because only 5 or 10 or 20 people will be talented and they will make the top bucks. How do you ensure a little more equity because in the US I remember this in Michigan or Illinois or somewhere they are thinking of a minimum wage for musicians.
I mean how do you bring a little more equitability into that whole system?
Vikram Mehra: First everybody could get a rightful share. So what has happened in India also both under Javed Akhtar and Anoop Jallodha is that composer, lyricist and not singers of everybody is getting a fair share right now for their work that they put in but that a fair share is of the revenue that their content is generating. At the end of the day how will I be fair if the music is working for artist A but rather than going and compensating the artist whose music is working end up compensating artist B.
I think that's unfair but whosoever music is working we have to be very very fair that an artist gets his or her due. Not just the singer but the composer and the lyricist also are getting it. All the other people who are helping them out right now also end up getting the fair share.
It's just not one voice or one face that's getting the due. That has happened in India also but can I go back and say that revenues that are getting attributed to one person whose song is doing very well should be shared with somebody whose song is not working.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: I agree but the fact is there are only two let's say three platforms in the world frankly where artists can go unless you go and create your own YouTube channel or something and millions of artists will be at I'm not talking of the bottom but will be at somewhere in the middle level but you really make money only in billions and billions of streams. Isn't that the basic fundamental nature of capitalism?
Vikram Mehra: How is all the film industry any different? The movies that hit the ball out of the park they really hit the ball out of the park and they really hit the ball out of the park. They make lots of money and many of the other movies are not even able to manage 50 crores for themselves.
So what works really works because everybody follows this thing that ABC is listening to the song or watching this movie and praising it then I should not miss it but that's a fundamental of it. So you can't run away from some of the fundamental truths where excellence or in this case excellence is gauged by how many people are listening to you in the case of music here or in the case of short format content right now how many people are following you and engaging out there with you. They will get their larger share and I don't personally find anything wrong with that.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: No nor do I but I'm just you know to get some kind of but that's true even in the physical distribution days, there was no equitability. The people who are the hit are the hit.
Vikram Mehra: Equitability of everybody should be getting the fair share and within the share all partners should get the share equitability is there. That I think happened. That's happening right now and happening very fair and transparent out there between Javed Shah and Anupji this is that sorted.
Those Isambra and IPRS they sorted it out and I think they've done a great job but they are also the when they distribute revenues they have to also distribute revenues on the basis of whose song is done well.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know you mentioned sounds and how people one of the things I it's two months back I was in Delhi and I heard India Today has launched these two AI pop stars okay they use it it's more like to announce that we also do because they have AI anchors etc and everything that we do in this business it does use a lot of technology whether it's compressing sounds distributing it everything but when you use it in the process of creation you're doing something else what is your thought on this whole thing of using AI to create music or to create characters there are we know there are AI models I'm sure you've heard of influencers blah blah blah so there's a lot of work happening and I've seen work happening on film scripts I've seen in the case of music I've seen it in the case of influencers and advertising your thought on its play in the music business.
Vikram Mehra: One it's a change which should be welcomed the only people are not going to be welcomed the change of AI again people Gen X and baby boomers like me right who will go back and say change is not good The fact of life is that every time change is happening the people who are the custodians of the old legacy have some amount of an issue because the rules of engagement keep on changing and we find at my age also AI is a very new beast to go back and handle but the fact of life is it's inevitable it is bound to happen whether we like it or we dislike it and there's a lot of positive things that AI bring to the table at the macro level we started work on the predictive part of way ahead okay right than any other entertainment company in India so today we are in a position that if you come to us and say that I have artists ABCD who has done a song composer is this lyricist is this situation is this the BPM of the song that I'm going to be making is roughly in this I can go back and to the level of around 88 to 90 percent accuracy predict how much song that how much money that song is going to make be making over the next five years we have gone to that level of of understanding how predictions can happen okay what it has done in my company is is decentralise the decision-taking process I take every forum to go back and say I may be heading this company I think I'm I should be marked zero out of ten in terms of my ability to gauge which song is going to go back I am not an expert in this I know how to run the business of entertainment doesn't make me an expert in entertainment here music even more that people above the age of 50 I think I should have no business deciding what a 21 or 24 year old wants to listen but these were great things to say how to execute it somebody has to take the decisions so we took this call around five years ago that we will make this entire new music selection process decentralised everything will be done right now by the local language experts all under the age of 30 to take a call whether to buy the song or not and to put fiduciary discipline out there we said predictive AI is going to come in predictive AI will go back and say how much can the money of the money can be made right now by a bunch of album that you have to buy at any particular time that gives us a limit of how much can these guys go back and play on the commercial side is a call that they are going to be taking under the age of 30 commercial call is completely in hands of predictive AI which means at the central level people at was sitting at the Bombay head office of Saregama they don't need to get into this part what value do I add right now by deciding I think there are better people than me who can take that decision that's a predictive AI part we are also transitioning ourselves on the generative AI part generative AI on music has got two angles to it one is a very strong view all of us rightfully have is that if tomorrow a new generative AI tool comes which is able to create a brand new song more than perfectly okay as long as that tool is not being taught trained on copyrighted music without taking our approvals sorry you are not only hitting my livelihood you are hitting the livelihood of everybody whom I'm playing royalties today.
Saregama's royalty payout is huge right now we are still paying royalties to the producers from whom we have taken the music for 40 years and 50 years and 60 years back the royalties to be paid to the other artist also you can't take that away and more there's a money issue there's a credit issue the new song has got created learning from some of the content that was created earlier those people need to be given credit for it but this is still an open issue which we are all trying to go back and find a solution to we want to support generative AI but we need to support in a fashion that is fair to the people whose copyrighted music is being used to train the tool yeah so that's one part on the second part can tools which have got clear licences according to me right now we should all start using and adopting those tools that much more let's see what kind of music comes out of that from on generative AI also as long as there's no copyright violation that's going on principally we are all internally we have moved faster on doing using generative AI to create video content where also debates are on right now should we get virtual influencers done now in the end the question is why is an influencer popular or not so popular not just because the kind of clothes that person is wearing it's about what kind of connection he's or she is able to build right now with their fans the jury is still out that in a country like ours where touch and feel isn't important in our part here we are not a society where we don't talk to each other too much so if you go out there to the Korean or the Japanese world where there's a little more formal virtual influencers have done well in a society like ours where we want there's a lot of personal space a connection that starts getting built jury is still out whether a virtual influencer is going to go back and work or not that does not mean we will not look at it we are also contemplating and debating that out there are spaces where virtual influencers may do very well there are spaces there may or may not do all that well so we have not reached the level of evolution where I can go back and tell you generative AI ABCD things are going to go back and work we are all in that phase right now saying test it out experiment with a lot of stuff ensure copyrights are protected whatever work we people are doing we don't want to infringe on somebody else's copyright and then experiment and see what
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: works but that's a catch-22 because generative AI cannot train without having access to earlier released material so and that is that is a big issue with it is a big issue using AI to create
Vikram Mehra: stuff so it is a big issue I'll tell you what we people have done we have gone out there and joined hands with IIT Bombay whereby they are co-developing a tool generative AI tool along with us which is being trained on Saregama's music only so there's no copyright infringement I'm using my own part here and we are working in a fashion right now with a new song we can go back and attribute credits to what all we have picked up from where so that the artist whose content is being used to produce the new piece of content also end up getting credit
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: for it okay I had two three questions more but I'm going to stick to one more because we are running out of time but you know you mentioned predictive AI and how you use it and we know the algorithm drives our lives whether it is our news consumption our entertainment video music consumption but the algorithm also throws out serendipity out of the window to my mind I was speaking to someone who is an analyst who looks at the cinema business and we were talking about how Mission Impossible for instance is being marketed only to the people who are likely to see me you and I listen to a song and the algorithm starts throwing similar songs so Spotify has made a playlist which it thinks is tailored to me but I want to listen to other songs I might listen to a Marathi song or a Punjabi song but I am that kind of consumer but many consumers get ghettoed into the what the algorithm is throwing it's exactly what AI does it has been trained to your taste and therefore does that therefore again limit discoverability because that whole question of the sorry 20 30 percent your audience hair which could have you could have got a spillover audience which was not possibly the TG for the song let's say for your young singer is the algo throwing serendipity out is it limiting the expansion of
Vikram Mehra: your offer okay so two parts here is first when I spoke about predictive AI we don't use predictive AI to choose which song to take no no I use it to decide how much money we will make right so choosing is still left right now to individuals but your bigger part yes the algorithm issue is that it starts becoming an echo chamber yeah right whether it's entertainment political views any view I end up listening to more of what algorithm thinks I like or unless of what they think I dislike which starts giving this feeling right now to me that the world is likes only this part only because I am seeing only this part that's one big issue second yes an outside view radically different view just does not go out there in your system when we were younger we used to be taught that whatever you believe in you need to read books that had a counter view right even if it's only to understand why you don't agree with that belief but you need to be exposed to that part which algorithm somewhere today maybe is not doing full justice to it my feeling is it's in still the very early days you will see further fine-tuning that will keep on happening it from a corporate perspective at times it may seem that it is more profitable to keep on feeding people what you know they are going to like and give it only to them but in the long run this will come out as a very short-sighted way because then there will be very small communities that will keep on liking or disliking or following somebody in the end everybody will have to go back and say that if you want to make a genuine global star you need to have this community not just limited to existing fans but need to expose it to other people to make the community that much bigger so it's an evolving part if both of you and I are still there 10 years down the line we'll have a chat on this it is it's an evolving part I think they've done a great job with these tools that they had I also believe right now they need to expand it they need to give serendipity is romanticising of this entire part I'm for all for it listen remember there's a company which built Carvaan and Carvaan one of the biggest part is serendipity exactly we have not built a playlist there nobody can predict which song is going to come next there is magic to it right now but I think beyond that so that I'm with you but beyond that it makes business sense to ensure that more people who were in the past not fans of an artist A or a movie franchise B should also be exposed to it and I think businesses are going to come around one thing I can tell you very safely hopefully all corporates in the end will do everything right now if they understand that anything is limiting their top lines or bottom lines right now they will correct it
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: that's not true for the news business but I'll not get into that one not my point and we haven't even discussed your film business which brings in a nice little slice of your top line but any parting comment on the shape of the media and especially if you want to make a comment on your film business on the shape of the media and entertainment business in India today because I see a lot of consolidation at the buying side you know your geostars have happened and your big mergers have happened and there are now five six big players in the play here and then there is this whole user-generated ecosystem which is google meta etc so this market has taken a certain shape your your sort of take on the shape and share gama very you know so
Vikram Mehra: too macro I just I know too macro I agree I agree I'll put it this way that I think as as as companies not just media entertainment all across and as a community we Indians need to start taking bigger risks I have a huge grudge or a grouse is a better word that our parents bring us up in a fashion where everything is protected we bring our children in such a protective environment that when the real life hits them they just don't want to take risks so what are we doing we are all working in a structure this has worked in the past let me play safe and try repeating the same thing again and again and again so that the chances of failure come down we not taking this culture means there is a stigma attached to failure we need to get out of it because unless we do bigger stuff and more experimentative stuff we can't become big we cannot follow this format whether in the world of video which we do a lot or in the world of music which also we do a lot out there it's not that I am above this right now I make the same mistake because all of us starts at times thinking right now you have shareholders why go out there and really take rock the boat chances of it working right now very very high big stuff has never got created out here in any form of entertainment right or other technologies where people have not taken a risk I think we in media entertainment sector also need to go back
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: and take some big bold risks I agree because I always do this GDP comparisons and we never look good compared to anything else and I agree even if I discount for the dollar value that's why I said the music business also I mean look at it all the global platforms are here but you know only
Vikram Mehra: limited with that part let's give it another two to three years entertainment sector overall I think subscription is going to go back and surprise you let's see I remember having this chat out there with you in 2005 we had gone pre Tata Sky yeah to visit Foxtel office and one of the debates I was having with you you also asked me this question and at that time Dish TV had launched and there are hardly any subscribers for Dish TV why do you think people are going to go back and pay and see what eventually happened DTH technology may have taken a beating but DTH was sitting at its peak and companies like Tata Sky were doing extremely well while charging that much higher right now compared to anybody else in the market it just tells you Indian customer is ready to go back and pay provided there is a rational benefit you are going to attach to it only emotional payoffs typically at times become difficult but attach a little bit of a rational benefit to it people are ready to go back and pay three years down the line you will hopefully have a different media industry
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Inshallah on that note thank you so much
Vikram Mehra: my pleasure thank you
