WHERES THE MUSIC?

Everything is going VAS these days ~ Music channels whose job was to serve primarily as a platform for musicians & artists,and promote music,now has anything but the music in it.These days,these music channels have replaced their popular music programes with a number of reality based shows.Why?Simple!Music shows get no sponsors,hence the music do not earn them ( ie. the channel ) any money,and moreover they have in turn to pay a royalty for the music video plays ( usually 4+mins ) to the artist/producer.While some channels did run free plays in them,others simply started going further and further away from the music.A music producer is the one who has to pay the channel if he wants to promote his music album and play clips ( of less than 2 mins,usually a few seconds promos ) on it.

So,unlike the west where independent music has a wide global profitable market,in India however independent music is quivering literally on its death bed.The music channels relies heavily on the various film promotions for revenue,but to play music and pay back the music producer is
simply a non existant system.
Whereas,it is the reality based shows that are now earning a huge revenue for the channels.So music has disappeared totally and has been dumped by the music channels and they have instead been replaced by the reality shows.Music channels now prefer to call themselves as 'youth channels'.

The reality shows are theme based,as such they gets targeted advertisers.But what keeps these reality shows popular for the channel in terms of revenue is the VAS tie up with the telecom giants.Almost all reality shows are vote based,where the contestant asks the audience for votes to make them win.The audience feels that their vote is important for the show to run as per them as they are designed as interactive shows.What they ( ie. The voters ) are unaware of is,that their votes are making both the telecom companies and the channels richer by the billions.Each such reality show generates millions of votes.Most of these votes deduct anything between Rs.3-5 per vote.Multiple votes mean more money deducted from your sim card.

Both the telecom companies as well as the music channels have a 50-50 revenue share agreement.As per the total number of votes that a particular programe recieves,the revenue is divided as such between them.The winner of the show gets a tiny fraction of it,while the other participants get nothing except their 15 minutes of fame.And the audience gets a much lighter pocket,with all their money spent on voting.Thus,with the influx of reality shows we see that music has completely vanished from the music channels.
If at all they play music,it is at wee hours or odd times ( generally avoided timings by the advertisers or off peak ).
Due to massive criticism of it,MTV did run a music show,'Coke Studio' recently,understandably because of heavy sponsorship by Coke itself.But music channels are simply not like the ones they were before when they only played music.And going by the present trend its highly unlikely that we will see only pure music anytime soon.