The Impact of Digitalization on Indian Independent Music

In India, music lacks an identity and it's usually packaged with films and bankrolled by the film producers. This leaves no room for artists who want to appeal to audiences of niche genres. A significant breakthrough happened in the 1990s, when independent music found some acceptance but it never really lasted. The tightly-held Indian music industry which made only mainstream film music till then, slowly started loosening up bit by bit. This process has only speeded up, mainly due to the ever increasing spread of digitalization, creating a level-playing field for the independent artists. This paper tries to study this phenomenon in the context of Indian independent music. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1s1p42