ARYA DHAYAL 

Viral Online Pop star 

Arya was #MUSICINDUSTRYINSIGHTS first podcast EVER

Arya… She’s more than you can imagine. Call it a sign of GOOD things to come. Arya is still at the very early stages in her ascension to fame. How cool is that??? It’s amazing to note… Maybe even more interesting to analyze; Success came overnight for this one (Even though she was playing away for years.) I do believe this is the truest difference between online stardom and “Paying your dues” The online world is it’s own magnetic marketing machine, far different, astronomically cheaper, maybe superior to the old ways of mass marketing and touring your guts out!! One happening, one video goes viral, and now you’re riding a whole new wave. Can you hold onto for the ride? Arya is. All is revealed in this podcast

#shortbio

A trained #Carnatic singer, Arya Dhayal walks the tightrope between Indian classical singing and western pop influences with relative ease and aplomb. The young musician became a household name after her powerful rendition of a Carnatic fusion of Believer inspired the legendary Amitabh Bachchan to #tweet in praise of her work. Her brave unconventional approach to music has inspired many with her songs like Kannodu Kaanbathellam, CID Moosa V/S professor and Marghazhi poove remix bringing in over a million views on YouTube. A rising social media icon, the singer boasts of a follower count of 614 000 subscribers on #YouTube, and 360 000 on #Instagram respectively.

https://youtu.be/uF5e8SdNiBE https://youtu.be/6Z6nVIKkGfY https://youtu.be/RGXkFrBsLKk https://youtu.be/4Pc5e1i1yW4 https://youtu.be/13YIq_LJJrA https://youtu.be/DLAvIVdDG3Y

MUSIC INDUSTRY OF INDIA

This is the National insight. The National overview. The 4 directions of India; North, South, East, and West.

3 vastly knowledgeable professionals, an in-depth MUSIC INDUSTRY INSIGHTS conversation. This is the groundwork, the foundation and fundamental knowledge of the music industry of the country of India.

Sandhya Surendran A 2007 graduate from India’s premier law school, NALSAR, Hyderabad, Sandhya’s experience as a business lawyer has focused on the technology, media and entertainment industries. She began her career with the erstwhile Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh. A. Shroff, a law firm in Mumbai, and moved to Infosys, Bangalore as in-house counsel in 2009. Following a three-year stint at Infosys, Sandhya joined the ad-tech start-up unicorn, InMobi, in 2012 and worked with them for nearly five years before she decided to quit in 2016 and start her independent legal & business consultancy firm, Lexic, and built a practice over the next few years focusing on media and entertainment. She then joined Vice Media in 2021 as Senior Legal Counsel for Asia Pacific.

Featured in the Chambers & Partners, Women in Law series in 2015.

Follow Sandhya’s podcast on the music industry, Lex Talk Music, here: https://www.lextalkmusic.com/

Anurag Tagat As a music journalist and writer, Anurag Tagat listens to music for both enjoyment and work. Starting out in 2010 with blogs and finding regular contributing positions in The Hindu newspaper, he became a full-time writer at Rolling Stone India in 2012, covering the growth of independent music in India as well as international artists performing in the country. Anurag’s current and past work appears in publications such as Firstpost, Variety, Billboard, Vogue India, Revolver, India Today and more.

Ritnika Nayan Ritnika Nayan is the Director of Market Development for CD Baby India as well as the owner of the company Music Gets Me High. Throughout her 20 years of experience in th.e music industry she has worked with artists like Maroon 5, Nickelback, Guns & Roses, Nucleya, Advaita and also consulted on festivals like Sula Fest, Ziro festival of Music, Wonderflip fest and more. Ritnika has written the book Indie 101 – The Ultimate Guide to the Independent Music Industry in India and has also set up India’s first stand alone Music Business Certification course at SACAC, Delhi. She has won various awards including the contribution to the creative industry award by University of Westminster, UK and the Young music entrepreneur runner up award by the British council.

THAIKKUDAM BRIDGE

#INDIA #BETHEBRIDGE #industryinsights

This band… this band might be the greatest live performance/festival band in the world. This podcast travels through all their experiences inside and outside of India. Also dealing with their collaborations with mega International stars and mega stars of India.

Thaikkudam Bridge the rock band with a soundscape built upon elements of folk and classical sounds of India interspersed, at times, with layers of progressive, pop, ambient and electronic textures. 7 years, 450 + gigs, 90 + international gigs and 25 countries, it truly has been a stupendous journey for the band. With a 15 member ensemble cast the band’s strength lies in its versatility and unpredictability thanks to nine vocalists and six instrumentalists from the length and breadth of the country, each of whom brings on board, a wealth of diverse musical, linguistic and cultural influences thus creating a unique musical experience that is truly global in nature yet local in idea.

Navarasam, the debut album was released in 2016 and it has 10 songs in all ( 9 + 1 bonus track). Navarasam is an assortment of songs that talks of dreary existentialism, socio-political commentaries, rebellion, freedom and of the human spirit of oneness! The second album, Namah, a dream project released to the delight of music lovers in 2019 , and is a collaborative featuring legendary artists from around the globe. With legendary associations such as Guthrie Govan, Chris Adler, Marco Minnemann, Jordan Ruddess, Pandit Ram Narayan, Pandit Viswamohan Bhat, Padmabhushan Umayalpuram K Sivaraman, Ustad Rashid Khan, Niladri Kumar, Anand Raj Benjamin Paul, the album was a milestone in Indian Independent Music.

Thaikkudam Bridge is currently the most sought after band in the new normalcy, doing music and online gigs for national and international audiences.

#bethebridge

WONDERWALL MEDIA – THE DOOR INTO INDIA

Any massive house or building may have many doors. Depending on what door you enter, it will inevitably lead you to where you end up, inside or outside that building. If you want to get to the places you want to go, you don’t want to keep reaching dead ends. Navigating a massive country’s music industry can be a daunting task. Wonderwall Media is one of these proverbial “doors” to India. Maybe, the greatest doorway of them all, for all those interested in India’s massive audience.  You need to start somewhere… This is a company that is built to establish, create, develop, and produce acts. Wonderwall Media is EVERYTHING the entertainment industry has to offer. 

TV production, (Over 800 Million Views on YouTube on content created), Major festivals, and Artist management.  Wonderwall mediaisn’t only a production company, they have their own brands of major Festivals, they have teams of camera men, editors, sound and light techs, everyone it takes to design, curate, and execute major productions. 

https://www.wonderwall.media 

Kimberley Chen – 

Australian-Born, Taiwanese Pop Star

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Chen

Dharma (達摩樂隊)

- is the brainchild of drummer Jack Tung (Stench of Lust, ex-Revilement, ex-Demise). For well over a decade, Jack, one of the forefathers of extreme metal drumming in Taiwan and the proprietor of Jack’s Studio, a well-known Taipei haven for metal and all kinds of music, dreamed of forming a band that would combine the ferocity of death metal with the teachings of the Buddhist sutras, but found it difficult to find the right partners in achieving his vision. Starting in 2018, Jack decided to collaborate with guitarist Andy Lin (ex-Bloody Tyrant, ex-Demise), a former band-mate, and together the two of them began writing songs that would incorporate various elements of death metal, black metal, and symphonic metal with Buddhist sutras and mantras, sung in the original Sanskrit as well as Mandarin Chinese. In 2019, Jack brought on board vocalist Joe Henley (Revilement, Stench of Lust, ex-Sledge City Slashers) to handle the lead vocals on the band’s twelve original songs, as well as some of the duties on the back-up choral sections.

Before Joe could fully partake, however, he had to receive the blessing of the band’s spiritual advisor, Master Song, a devout monk and teacher of Buddhist studies in Taipei. Over a matter of months in early 2019, Joe studied under Song, learning about Buddhism and the various Mahayana sutras he would be singing/screaming over, and eventually Joe took refuge in the Three Jewels, thus becoming a Buddhist himself and receiving Master Song’s blessing to perform the sutras in public.

And so the core of the band (later rounded out by rhythm guitarist Jon Chang, ex-Bloody Tyrant, and bassist Bull Tsai, also of Desecration) was formed. Dharma has just wrapped up recording their debut full-length (at Lin’s own studio in Taichung, Taiwan), with the tracks due to be shipped off to a studio in Poland for mixing/mastering in September. The group will make its live debut later this year in Taipei, with the goal of eventually touring anywhere and everywhere they can to spread their sound to every corner of the globe.

https://www.facebook.com/Dharmabandtw/

https://www.instagram.com/dharmaband_tw/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QIXGxDSpb913AEWhIDSKC?si=GRUgisZiTJWYSDxeFV7Egg&dl_branch=1

https://dharmatw.bandcamp.com/album/bhaisajyaguru

Lineup: Jack Tung—Drums Andy Lin—Lead Guitar Jon Chang—Rhythm Guitar Joe Henley-Vocals Bass—Bull Tsai Backing Vocals/Chants—Master Miao Ben 

Joe Henley is a Taipei-based freelance writer, journalist, script writer, author, and musician. 

Originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Joe moved to Taiwan straight out of journalism school in 2005. Since then, he’s reported from Taiwan, Myanmar, the Philippines, China, Cuba, and various other locales around the world for print, online, and television media. 

When not chasing down stories or writing scripts, Joe chips away at the various novels he has in the works (published under the name J.W. Henley), and performs in metal and punk bands. His latest novel, Migrante, is about the ways Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan and elsewhere are exploited for financial gain. Based on Henley’s reporting on migrant worker issues in Taiwan from 2015 through 2020, Migrante was released via Camphor Press in July of 2020 to widespread critical acclaim. The Mandarin version ofMigrante is due out via Reading Times in mid-2022. 

John Huang 

Marketing Director/Promoter/Program Director Atrip/WWWWWTAPES/Asia Rolling Music Festival/Golden Indie Music Awards Taiwan/Taipei

John Huang is the Marketing Director of Atrip (d.b.a. Rikka Trading company limited). He has created a new wave of Southeast Asian tourists to come to Taiwan by cooperating with musicians and photographers by developing and creating a cooperation that works in the fields of Travel, Music, Life, Events and Views.

He is also the co-founder of WWWWWTAPES studio that promotes Southeast Asian indie music to Taiwan and manages publishing, tours and crossover cooperations. And they made a special collaboration which WWWWWTAPES have their own program in every hours to play those indie music they picked over 1400 Taiwan convenience stores.

Lastly, he is the Program director of 2021 Asia Rolling Music Festival (ARMF) and oversea PR of Golden Indie Music Awards 2021: Asia Rolling music festival (ARMF) held in 2018 for the first time in Taiwan with the expectation of allowing the exchange activities of creative music both at home and abroad to take place through music festival, the goal of Asia Rolling Music Festival is to set up an iconic music creation communication platform in Asia and demonstrate the distinctive music style and spirit of creation of Asia by inviting Taiwanese and Asian indie artists to give music performances in addition to organizing forums and industrial matchmaking events.

YU Yang

Midi Music Festival, China

Head of international collaborations

Beijing Midi Productions Co. LTD

Yu Yang is a senior promoter and propagator in the field of rock music and original music, and an active organizer of international cultural exchanges. In his late teen-years, he co-founded an underground rock magazine and a record label when he was living in Germany. After returning to Beijing in the mid-1990s, he started his career in the IT field for many years and then founded the “Heavy Music Painkiller” magazine in 1999 in Beijing. He began to work with the team as the earliest professional tour organizer in China, organized China-tours for established international bands, and with his colleagues worked an operative team to for large scale Chinese music festivals such as Midi, ModernSky, and Zhangbei InMusic. Yu Yang officially joined the Midi Music Festival in 2011 as the head of the International Cooperation Department, which includes international artist booking, collaborations between oversea cultural entities and concurrently also as a stage production supervisor. During the past years, he conducted cultural exchange projects (a few on behalf of official entities such as the Ministry of Culture of China) and helped Chinese acts such as Nine Treasures, Dream Spirit, Die From Sorrow, Tulegur, Da Da Wa, etc. to tour Europe. In 2016, he co-founded the “Mumaland Festival” in Zhuhai and in 2018 he worked as one of the core members of the organizing committee to establish the Yugong Yishan Music Festival in Beijing.

www.linkedin.com/in/rockinchina/