Here is our pick of the top milestones related to Indian music in 2010:
- AR Rahman’s nomination for Golden Globe – For a few years now, AR Rahman has been steadily progressing towards becoming a global phenomenon. However, this nomination gives him a big push in that direction because, unlike Slumdog Millionaire, his score for 127 hours is largely without any obvious Indian influence (except Acid Darbari).
- Google launches music search for India – Anything Google does has the potential to be big. At this time, the service is really a no-frills search built on top of music licensed by three partners. But it could be a lot more in the future.
- Introduction of Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010 – This bill, introduced earlier this year, is likely to be approved soon. For the music industry, the bill’s objective is to give more rights to authors (lyricists, music directors) and performers (singers) and increase protection of copyrighted artifacts (songs). There is a lot of legalese but some of it has been decoded here. Of course, implementation of the law is an entirely different ball game and we’ll have to wait and watch to see if these amendments meet their objectives.
- Copyright Board reduces royalties for radio – The Copyright Board reduced radio royalties by about 86% when it fixed the royalty rate to 2% of the radio station’s advertising revenues. Music labels are contesting or bypassing this ruling but for now, the future of radio in India looks safe.
- Common Wealth Games (CWG) and Music – Who would have thought that music would be such a big part of CWG games? AR Rahman was universally ridiculed for delivering a mediocre CWG theme song for a hefty price of Rs 5 Crores. He eventually ended up sprucing up his original composition to produce this. Kailash Kher jumped in and gifted this song to the nation to celebrate the spirit of CWG. There may have been a lot of other big names involved in CWG but it was a cute, 7-year old boy who won everyone’s heart with this tabla performance.
- Indian songs regularly hit top 10 on iTunes World Music Charts – From Sheila Ki Jawani at the time of writing this post, to Raghu Dixit’s No Man Will Ever Love You to Endhiran. What would happen if India had iTunes?
Are there other milestones we are missing?