She’d said—‘I grew up with music so close to me, it was my normal’. Having grown up around her mother and a world of musical luminaries within the timeless walls of the AIR office, Sukanya’s entire world was classical music, its practice and performance—and this was neither grand nor extraordinary. I realised, while talking to her, that I was also afflicted with the mundanity of it all, as I was with the ailment on the flipside. When the bulk of your childhood is spent in rooms tuning tanpuras, fetching cha-shingara and running the 100-odd chores it takes to set up what you only think of as a small musical gathering in your living room, it is easy to forget that these rooms are guarded by heavy doors that many would like to see open. And, as Sukanya put it, when the only window one has into the world of classical music is through public concerts in grand spaces—especially if you’re entirely uninitiated—‘then it’s a very snooty and insular community to try and become a part of.’ So people tend not to.

Upstairs was born in 2018, partly from Sukanya and Tejas’s intent to open the doors of these insular drawing rooms to all who wanted to listen. Etymologically, and historically, a baithak is just that—a cozy living room (which your grandparents perhaps still call a baithak-khana or baithak-ghar), where music flows uninhibited among a little cozy huddle of musicians and audiences, punctuated, delightfully, with conversation. And tea, of course, or whiskey if your host is so inclined. In this little melee, often semi-circular or circular in arrangement, expertise and awe each melts into fun, because normally, there’s only enough floor in a drawing room to seat the host’s very close few. In the NCR, however, one is likely to come across exceptional hosts these days with large hearts and the coziest drawing rooms.

In the last couple of years, my feed has been blessed with videos of golden rooms with honeyed music from the capital and its flanks, and every single video has thawed in me what years of doomscrolling and margarine music had frozen. Fairly young ventures, all, that host classical musicians from across subcontinental traditions, modes and gharanas, and, what is visibly a very diverse audience. Spread across the map of the NCR, each of these have their own language and their own modus operandi, but I found in my conversations with all a common, central tenet that drives their efforts despite the obvious inconveniences of hosting an artist, their team, and anywhere between 30 and 65 strangers (largely) in their homes — that classical music must be made accessible to all.

Having been introduced to the world of metal by Tejas as a young adult, Sukanya made note of the huge turnouts at metal gigs, which are enabled primarily by the permission existing setups grant one to get into metal at any stage in their life, which is almost the very opposite of classical music. The general perception, she says and I agree, goes along the lines of having to wear kurtas, having to sit on the floor and having to be inducted into the tradition at infancy (if not birth) to even enjoy, let alone understand, such music. Those who’ve braved the great divide know this last one to be untrue — one might ask Prashant and Mona, the lovely folk at Tehzeeb ka Aangan, who only began formal schooling in classical some six years ago, in their fifties. The rest, my guru might argue, is sealed in stone. I remember having gone to class in jeggings once when I was 12 and those infernal things were considered cool. That was one of the few times this soft, patient, wonderful man I think of as my proxy-grandfather truly seemed to find common ground with the bulls at Pamplona. For the rest of the world, though, this wall is, as Sukanya puts it, ‘a PR problem. So we decided to solve it with a PR solution’.

In Upstairs’s case, this was doubling down on the coziness of the baithak-khana. Sukanya is a Marketing and PR professional, who has been able to package her baithak as an ‘unmissable’ quintessential in the ‘Delhi scene’ — and although the Upstairs Instagram makes it look like this effort took off immediately, it has taken years of polishing and one Covid-era regroup to build what looks so happening in 2026. It is now one of the hottest gig scenes in the city, with 65 tickets selling out within a couple hours, at most of their drops. This is, in fact, the first time I’ve been able to respond in time and grab one for myself.

Nivriti operates differently. Dr Preeti, an Intensive Care specialist and the heart behind this lovely baithak, wants to recreate in her space the opulence and regality of the baithaks of kings and zamindars of yore. ‘Nivriti’ literally means the ‘pathway to bliss’, and at this South Delhi baithak, one is very likely to find the same. I will be honest, this baithak I’d interacted least with, and I did wonder whether this meant the renegation of the kind of cozy drawing-room comfort that Tehzeeb or Upstairs were working with to the backseat, and boy, was I off track. In this aside from her very demanding career, Dr Preeti strives to soak her guests with the love she grew up with — for music, primarily, and also for her food. She says, with clear-eyed confidence, ‘I’m a great cook’, and the way her sessions have been going since September 2025, one had best believe this to be true.

In fact, in the entire matter of creating this space of comfort for the uninitiated, food plays a rather large role. Just this afternoon, I came across a supper club reel (and these are doing superbly in Kolkata), which took a step apart from the whole awareness-campaign aspect of social media marketing to actually just talk about how quintessential a role food plays in creating homes out of strange rooms. At each of the three baithaks I’ve interacted with, food is the Lebowskian rug. Nivriti and Upstairs do lovely home dinners — both Sukanya and Preeti cook themselves and thoroughly enjoy cooking for as many guests as they have that evening. As a very amateur cook myself, I hope someday to get where they are, but for now, find myself in agreement with Prashant, who mentions very candidly — ‘the cooking thing is a bit of a pain’. For Tehzeeb, the chai-nashta window is the buffer time they offer to their guests to trickle in and get settled before the music begins. Similar, functionally, to Upstairs’s dinner window, which keeps guests from jumping on the cab-apps during a set. To a new shastriya-head though (definitely do throw me in jail for coining that horrid term but keep in mind, the alternative was shastriya-sangeek), this little bite is a very vital slat in the rough bridge across the gorge of wonder.

Each of these efforts has their own modules for the rest of the slats. At Upstairs, for instance, Sukanya spends the first leg of the show explaining to her guests what they’re about to listen to. She says, ‘All the knowledge that exists around classical music is intended to create a performer. There is very little educational material that caters to someone who aspires to be a listener’, which is the gap they’re trying to bridge with what we can only very accurately call adda at Upstairs. Tehzeeb, on the other hand, tries to ease the new listener in. I was at their baithak featuring Mazhar Hussain in July, where the audience was largely neighbours and family friends. In what seemed to be perfect, unspoken harmony between the host and the artist, the operating pattern was established to be the slow escalation of songs from the recognisable and somewhat mainstream to the intense. Of course, this was where the artist was most comfortable, and not a single guest was even jittery.

This is the success of the quaint little baithak. By the end of an evening in one of these drawing rooms, the grand ice wall that keeps the uninitiated away from classical music melts into, if anything, the comfortable mundanity of a family home. So comfortable, in fact, that one is able to access emotions that are hard to even scratch at Chaudaiyya Hall or Kamani Centre. Dr Preeti mentioned one of her guests at her baithak featuring Dhruv Bedi, who felt safe enough to only weep for nearly twenty minutes.

So, here’s a little update from our corner of the music world. This one’s got a bit of everything- research, education, community, and a few exciting collaborations. We hope you’ll find something that sparks your interest, and even inspires you to get involved!

Out Loud and Equalised: Promoting gender representation in the Indian music industry

Most existing conversations about gender representation and experiences in Indian music rely on anecdotes, observations, and the occasional article, which are useful but not enough to build real policy or industry change on. Additionally, almost none of it accounts for gender minorities beyond the cis-binary, or for how caste, religion, geography, and class shape who gets to participate in music-making and decision-making around it at all.

Despite growing conversation around gender equity in music globally, India has had no comprehensive, cross-sector data on this issue - until now.

Supported by UNESCO’s international fund for cultural diversity and led by Anahad Foundation, with TINNUTS as the project partner, we’re excited to be the research partner for this national-level R&D project advocating for gender representation beyond just the optics.

The project aims to build the first comprehensive picture of gender representation across India's music ecosystem, documenting experiences across roles, regions, and identities to help inform future industry practices and policy, and follow up with direct action through mentorship and skills development programs based on the initial findings.

At Neon, we’ve always believed that a stronger music ecosystem starts with stronger systems. Research like this helps move conversations beyond assumptions and towards action, which is exactly the kind of work we support and actively contribute to.

If you work in music, we’d love your input.

Whether you’re on stage, behind the scenes, in a studio, at a label, or anywhere else in the industry, your voice & experience matters.

The survey is anonymous, takes about 8-10 minutes, and is available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu.

TAKE THE SURVEY

And if you know someone whose perspective should be part of this conversation, please share it with them too.

Community partner at OOTB Soundboard 2026

We’re excited to be a community partner for OOTB Soundboard 2026, which is taking place in our home city, Bangalore!

This is the second edition of the event organised by the Out of the Box (OOTB) Educators Community, emerging from the work of OffSet Education. The symposium brings together music educators, artist-educators, and arts practitioners to explore what the future of music education in India could look like.

This year’s edition will feature conversations with leading voices in arts education, interactive workshops, a fireside chat, and the first public insights from the OOTB Music Education Survey Report 2025; all centred around one question: How can we collectively reimagine music education in India? We have been sitting in on some of their planning and curation meetings and trust us when we say that this is a day you will want to clear your Sunday for!

If you’re a music educator, run a classroom or studio, or are simply interested in the future of music education, we’d love to see you there. Happening on 2nd August 2026 at The Humming Tree, Bangalore.

Register for Soundboard 2026

Calling all music educators

As part of Soundboard 2026, there’s also a Teacher Showcase, giving educators the opportunity to perform and share their practice with the community.
Performances can be up to 10 minutes long, and applications are open until 26th July.

Apply for the Teacher Showcase

Let's build something together

Working across research, education, live experiences, and community reminds us that music is about so much more than what happens on stage. It’s also about the people behind it, the spaces that nurture it, and the communities that help it grow.

If you’re building something in this space, or are simply curious about collaborating, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking for meaningful work to support. Whether you’re looking for research support, a community partner, thoughtfully curated live music experiences, or someone to help turn an idea into something real, we’d love to explore it together. From research and education to live experiences and community initiatives, we’re always excited to work with people building things in music.

If that sounds like you, let’s talk. Neon is always open to new conversations, ideas, partnerships, and ways to support the people and communities shaping the future of the Indian music and culture industries.

Neon’s Curated Playlists: 2025 Archive & Submissions 🎧

We’re a little over halfway through the year, which felt like the perfect time to pause and look back at the music we’ve discovered so far.

Last year, we spent each month listening through submissions from artists across the country, discovering incredible new music and building our Neon Curated Playlists one release at a time. It remains one of our favourite ways to support independent artists through thoughtful, human-led discovery. We’ve now brought together all of last year’s selections into a 2025 Playlist Archive, making it easier to revisit old favourites or discover artists you may have missed the first time around.

Submissions are still OPEN

We continue reviewing new releases & submissions every few months, so if you’ve got music you’d like us to hear, keep sending it our way. Beyond playlist consideration, standout submissions may also be selected for a dedicated artist feature. The aim remains simple: to create a thoughtful, human-curated discovery space for independent music.

SUBMIT YOUR MUSIC HERE!

Whether you’re an artist looking to submit your work or a listener searching for your next favourite independent artist, we’d love for you to explore our playlists.

EXPLORE | SAVE | SHARE

Also, if you haven’t already, check out Play It Back, a newsletter series that features essays, reviews, and cultural commentary that examine the music industry a little more closely.

This year, guest writer Asmita has contributed a series of sharp, thoughtful pieces that are well worth a read:
The Big Concert and the Small
Is Indiewood the Newest Thing?

Whether it’s through supporting research, bringing people together, or creating new opportunities, we’re grateful to spend our days working alongside people who care deeply about music and the ecosystems that help it thrive. We’re excited to keep building, learning, collaborating, and seeing where these conversations take us next.

Thank you for being part of the Neon community- we appreciate you.💛

I was already pretty tired of all of it, but for me, this was the final indictment of the state of today’s Bollywood music. For everyone else, a quick glance at recent artist behaviour should help. There’s obviously been tremendous buzz around Arijit’s dramatic retirement (notably on the coattails of ‘Sukoon’), but also, you might have noticed Sonu Nigam looking quite restless lately. Having hopped from remix to remake to whatever ‘Pardesiya’ was, he’s now gone very viral for deigning to appear on Chaar Diwaari’s track ‘Iss tarah’. Obviously, there is a chronology to this, and it’s really tempting to conclude that either a sort of pursuit for continued relevance or, in his case, I’d wager, dissatisfaction with the kind of work that has been finding itself on his table has pushed him out of concrete Bollywood, into the gossamer world of the ✨Indie✨. That said, is this really, in the manner that I’ve put it, an acrobatic leap from one world of music to another?

A couple weeks ago, Sooka.mag put out a short based on ‘Iss Tarah’ that claimed one of the major trends we would see in 2026 would be the marriage between Bollywood and the Independent. And while I cannot at all disagree, I wonder whether these categories even remain concrete enough in 2026 for there to be a ‘marriage’ between them. As for our roommate, the elephant—there is the complex matter of what even comprises Indie in 2026. This would have been a labels-only conversation in the UK-US ecosystem, but India works a little differently, so we’re going to have to come at this from a type-of-music/artist perspective (also because what do any (most) of us know about labels anyway?)

I remember a heated argument with a friend in high school, where I stood by the notion that anything ‘India’-adjacent was called indie, in the manner that indigo (the pigment but also the airline, I guess) is identified. She insisted it came from independent, which is entirely true in a global context—stuff that’s produced independent of major market players, like in the world of cinema or books or even FMCG, right? Amit Gurbaxani gives it more context on an episode of his Indian Music Charts podcast with Akhila Shankar: in the present market context, this ‘independence’ from the mainstream, for want of a better word, would include music produced by small labels, music produced independently and distributed by big labels, or, in multi-tier production houses, by lower tiers, with smaller resources.

Now, in India, the ‘mainstream’, without question, is the grand, multi-tiered, complex, nearly urban (in structural terms, not socio-cultural) ecosystem that is Bollywood, and the immediate impulse is to think of the major labels as operational largely, if not only, in this realm. Besides that, of course, there are the ‘vernacular’ film industries, which are also produced and distributed largely by these major labels. Beyond these industries, there is what we have grown up thinking of as ‘independent’, because they existed outside film.

There were the rock acts of the ‘90s and ‘00s, the massive phenomenon that used to be called ‘indie-pop’, which included proto-desi-edm (the electronic mixes and remixes of ‘60s tracks), and also the Punjabi pop industry. In fact, similar to the last one, there were pop music pockets in almost every subculture in South Asia (segue into note, please).¹ There is also the massive industry of devotional and festival music, which was, at the time, ruled over by Anup Jalota on one hand and Falguni Pathak on the other. In terms of sound, these were often far from the prescribed schema for the 5 or 6 types of Bollywood songs. Also, because they existed outside film, they could be thought of as independent.

Big shocker? This entire corpus of music, diverse, discordant and massive in scale, despite outlying the Bollywood monolith and the film-music industry, is quite mainstream in terms of production, rights, and circulation. Lucky Ali has been affiliated with Sony since Sunoh (1996), and Alisha Chinai had only two albums with a non-mainstream label (Magnasound). Indian Ocean’s eponymous debut was with HMV (1993) and Kandisa with Times Music (2000). Euphoria, the poster boys for the ‘indie’ band, were launched by Archies (the card company, at quite a large scale) and had a number of records with almost every big label till they set up Dhoom Records sometime in the 2000s. For these acts, the ‘independent’ status came like a declaration of their scale at the peaks of their careers, after having secured a wide enough listener base with the help of mainstream distributors (jump to notes for quick side read)2

Then parallely, in the late ‘00s and the early ‘10s, there was the impulse within film to move towards music that didn’t subscribe to the film-music model. Famously, Vishal and Shekhar launched The Raghu Dixit Project in 2010 on Sony via CounterCulture, after the demise of Dixit’s band Antargini and nearly 5 years of TRDP performing at local levels and attempting to establish a presence on a very young content-internet. But this was a one-off event in a time that was generally difficult for small artists because propagation without label distribution (and promotion) was a huge challenge.

Soon, though, having tinkered with this impulse on Coke Studio and Dewarists and failed (somewhat), MTV dove into the indie world like a benefactor. A channel called MTV Indies came into existence in 2011, platforming small non-film artists alongside bigger, known names, so they could reach audiences outside their immediate geographical contexts. And this was fortuitously timed too, to coincide with the growth of YouTube and SoundCloud. Thereafter, with the possibility of vast circulation, there was a boom of fresh, new sounds from small, unliaisoned artists—Ghalat Family became a thing, as did Prateek Kuhad, Parekh and Singh, Madboy and Mink, and Dualist Inquiry. And Nucleya sort of birthed EDM in the subcontinent. Once these acts grew in size, the ‘indie’ labels started coming into being, and this solidified in about 2019 with hip-hop (a little list in comments for those interested). So by about 2020, there was a recognisable circuit of small to medium-scale indie artists who were touring, performing, and becoming significant names within genre realms.

Obviously, predictably, and as with literally anything sellable, everything changed pandemic onward. Access to the content-verse has now opened the doors to infinite opportunity, which means two things for the indie world. First, although label representation remains coveted, it isn’t really required for an artist to appear on the map. Second, the notion of scale, which was already somewhat inverted in Indian indie, is now entirely redundant. So, as of 2026, practically every musician who has the courage, resources, and intent to publish music online is as much an indie artist as Indian Ocean today. Which is, essentially, everyone ranging from, for instance, Peter Cat Recording Company, on the one hand, to the Mondal Brothers on the other, and obviously includes young acts like Aksomaniac and Gini and Chaar Diwari.

Now onward to how distinct this world was or is (or, in fact, remains) from Bollywood. On one hand, there has been this consistent effort within Bollywood to emulate the ‘independent’ when it does well. In the last decade or so, this has been true of independent songs, like ‘Samjhawan’, or ‘Mannike’ or the very, very butchered ‘Pasoori’; or even sounds in general (throw a little rap verse in a qawwali track - et voila!) On the other hand, the Coke Studio impulse remains. A very potent instance of this is Salim-Suliman’s Bhoomi project, published on their own platform, Merchant Records—indie-coded, non-formulaic, experimental stuff that they’d have trouble accommodating within film. And yet some of the former, perhaps, leaks into the latter. Anyone who has heard ‘Sukoon’ and wonders why it sounds so familiar—isn’t it just ‘Aahatein’ packaged fancier? 3^, 4

Conversely, there is the fact that the pipeline for most artists in this country has historically ended at Bollywood—the greatest example of this is maybe Papon or even, perhaps, Jasleen Royal. But till about a few years ago, you would very rarely have heard of a film artist moving into independent production. Even when they stopped working in cinema (which, again, very rare), they’d go on to make albums produced by major labels, and in most cases, these didn’t do well. The only exception I can think of is maybe Shaan’s Tanha Dil (Virgin Records, 2000), which can actually be called independent by all means. Then there’s now.

No music can distinctly be identified as ‘Bollywood’ anymore, and on the whole, that might be a good thing, because small artists like Reble now have the opportunity to be thrown violently into the limelight. But generically, this has thrown the industry into a bit of a tizzy. Sunidhi doesn’t have mildly suggestive item tracks to dynamise, so she makes her own. For Shreya and Sonu, it feels like their entire catalogue is jaded, and there’s very little in the industry that they want to lend their names to. And there’s the touring, which, although it did exist before to a certain extent, was never as truly massive and centre-stage for Bollywood artists as it is now. And the music they’re making outside Bollywood still sounds quite…Bollywood? [This might be incompetence on my part, but I absolutely struggle to distinguish so many of the new Instagram-indie tracks from the two Dhurandhar soundtracks.]

So there’s this general sort of outward motion from the confines of playback towards music that can be marketed as one’s own, and in that sense, independent, but the fabric of this new indie music is complicatedly and almost precariously placed on the margins of the familiar. Of course, all of this music is still produced, licensed to, and distributed by the bigwigs—even ‘Iss Tarah’ (Def Jam via Universal).

So, with altered music, major licensing, and the ability to freely leak in and out of each other’s realms, are ‘Bollywood’ and ‘Indie’ still very distinct entities that can be “married” to one another? I don’t know anymore, this has been a long typing exercise. You tell me.

Those clued in know this already, but for those new to the gig scene in India, elementary to understanding its format until the late 2010s is the difference between how the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘alternative’ are perceived in Indian music. For ease of process, let’s just say film music and any machinery associated with it comprises the mainstream. And if so, everything else is alternative. This would include Classical(Hindustani/Carnatic/Zubin-Mehta-Orchestral) music, music we started calling ‘Indie’ around 2010 but our parents used to think of as ‘fusion’, smaller jazz and electronic acts, and the big bands that crossed genres but could, at large, be thought of as rock.

The chief difference between the mainstream and the alternative (besides the kind of labels that produced either) was in the manner in which they were consumed. Mainstream music, albeit occasionally presented live, lived in spaces behind cinema and TV screens as playback. Most of the other kind of music was too dynamic to be confined thus. They needed space to breathe and exist in real time, and as such, were the basis of the Big Concert in India.

Now, quite obviously, the mainstream has never needed community for audience or growth. The alternative, however, has always found strength in numbers. So in the indie/rock sphere (often together), the Big Concert tended to be a music festival, and in the pure classical sphere too, it used to be conferences and congresses. Three days long on average, one act after the other, often collaborative, and most importantly, nearly never hierarchical in an ‘opener–headliner’ sense. It was rare to catch a Parikrama or Baiju Dharmajan Syndicate type gig in isolation, so in 2017, when I watched Indian Ocean in a single act gig at Nazrul Mancha in Kolkata, I sort of knew the Weekender model of the multi-act gig was fading.

Soon, the Big Concert space morphed to accommodate a new mainstream (which would now include Billboard stars across genres and from around the world) and a new model—less musical playing about, more orchestrated show; less festival, more huge single gigs; less artist, more star. In a very short span of time, the performance spectrum changed almost dramatically and this change ensured that music, too, would now be redefined in terms of performance spaces.

The looming question with the reassignment of the Big Concert space (which was now anywhere between Sunidhi and Metallica) was, where would one catch a ‘Big Alt’ gig now? The main players to emerge from this transformation were clubs, cafes, and restaurants, which became more and more music-friendly. This was a blessing for smaller alt acts because it gave them a space to cultivate a loyal audience as they moved towards single-act stature via the cultural organisation (DAG etc.) route. But this also enforced a genre-based hyperclassification within the alternative space.

Cafes and clubs are great for acoustic acts (“soft” music in general), and a bunch of spots have come up specifically to foster jazz and electronic acts [for which we might have Revolver Club to thank]. Then again, small alt acts remain collaborative and are still great at creating performance spaces for themselves and their peers. Older house concert ventures like Sofar remain, of course, but in pockets, smaller, innovative efforts have built their own spaces. In Kolkata, for instance, there’s Ponder Alt—one of their event series is a charity gig called Parklife, and another is a cosy little supper club–adjacent setup they call @Home, where the artist literally opens their home to paying audience.

Similar to the second one is a really excellent venture in the classical space in Delhi called Upstairs. While the classical concert largely retains the conference/congress model, a setup like this, which hosts Hindustani and Carnatic vocalists and instrumentalists at the organisers’ home (and follows the act with a home-made meal), makes classical accessible. Big Alt in the jazz/acoustic space, of course, either travels to Coachella via Obama’s end-of-year playlist or tours the world with Khruangbin.

Where, however, does rock go? Besides the four or five major bands that now have enough fame and exposure to tour internationally and headline independent shows, I’ve seen significant bands in the last few years be relegated to (delightfully accessible but) rather small spaces. Our university alone—and this isn’t a brag—has been able to afford Indian Ocean, Swarathama, Agam the Band and Agnee for its annual fest. Of course, the festival format does still exist quite prominently in the Northeast—Ziro in Arunachal and Cherry Blossom in Meghalaya, for instance—but as they too move towards accommodating mainstream artists, the scene for younger rock acts who haven’t yet become internet famous like Gauley Bhai or Girish and the Chronicles, the performance space wants for much.

This is not to say, of course, that it isn’t exciting to watch the Big Concert space become what it has in the recent past. If it keeps pace and if I keep my fingers crossed tightly enough, Green Day might make their way back to India, and this time I’ll throw all my savings at early bird type passes (never let my father know). In the meantime, though, as clubs, cafes, and terraces sport better and better shows, it might be nice to catch small rock acts as they make their way to Obama’s end-of-year playlist.

But the chaos comes with good news. Last month, Prarthana officially welcomed a baby (aka recruited Neon’s newest apprentice, and yes, Lolo has been taking her associate duties very seriously to train him up). Congratulations to the family, we really do love a wholesome team expansion.

Let’s rewind a bit.

We kicked off 2025 in Kochi…

…with the second edition of DeccanAlt! Brilliant speakers, incredible artists, and the warmest community response- Kochi showed up in the best possible way. DeccanAlt growing this fast still feels surreal, and this edition set the tone for everything that came after.

We were at All About Music’s 9th Edition in Mumbai in August. A whole lot of energy packed into three days. The energy was electric, and it’s always an amazing experience to connect with the industry at large.

Also, somewhere in the middle of all of this, Neon turned 2 (?!) and had an internal restructure with one of our cofounders moving on to other pursuits. Nitya and Arav also completed a whole year at Neon, and their contributions will forever be coded into the DNA of who we are!

We also pivoted our consulting services to more research-focused work and delivered market research and strategic business development initiatives for our clients, and thoroughly enjoyed learning about different parts of the music industry in the process.

We rolled out our Music City Report 2024-25 (Bangalore & Kochi Edition). If there’s one big takeaway, it’s that both cities are actively building their own future: with systems, processes, and community-led solutions, even with almost zero policy-level support. The ecosystem is small but fierce, and this report stands as proof of that.

Music city 2024-25 report: Download here

We also kicked off two collaborative projects - Listen In with Magnisium Media and Mapped with Orange Juice Lab. September was very “Zoom but make it intellectual.”

🎧 New Initiatives We Launched (and Loved!)

We started a few things this year that we absolutely loved working on, and you seemed to love them too:

Neon’s Curated Playlists:

In a sea of algorithms, our aim was simple: human-curated playlists designed to put great music first. We just dropped our very last update for the year, so please, go check it out and dive into some new sounds before the new year hits!

Discover & Save playlists here!

Mind Your Own Music Biz:

A new series (across IG and LinkedIn) breaking down what every independent artist and manager should know about running their music careers like a business. With the amount of gatekeeping of information, access and tools in the music industry, we decided to share whatever little we know in an open & transparent manner. Topics covered this year ranged from release strategy & distribution, the basics of music marketing, artist identity, to live strategy and a whole lot of things we wish someone had told us earlier.

Artist Spotlights:

One of our goals is to highlight and discover amazing music and Indian artists. That’s why we spotlight artists every month- musicians who are creating truly amazing work and deserve the extra shine. You’ve probably seen their mentions in our monthly Freestyle updates or on our Instagram!

Arjun C
Meet Arjun C, guitarist turned indie musician, pop culture nerd, and all-around enthusiast for “the things that make life worth living.” He’s been playing since he was 8, and officially dropped his first single in 2023.

His music feels- “Joyful. Hopeful. Dance-y. Nostalgic for a time that you didn’t even experience”

When he’s not writing or performing, he’s binging anime, playing tennis, or soaking up inspiration from friends, 80s Japanese commercials, and the internet’s most random corners. P.S. His new single Common People is out.
Follow Arjun and listen to their new music here!

Ishaan Nigam
Singer-composer Ishaan, hailing from Bahraich and rooted in Indian classical music, has been crafting melodies since 2019, with 25 singles that explore emotion in every shade. His latest, ‘Pakeezah’, defines love in its purest, most peaceful form.

Most of my compositions come to me while I ride my Activa. I just park, record a thought, and restart the scooter.

Follow Ishaan and listen to their new music here!

Detailed artist features on our Instagram

Play It Back:

We also launched our slightly nerdy, occasionally spicy monthly newsletter of essays, reviews and cultural commentary. It comes out on the second Tuesday of every month, and your response to this has been so encouraging. We’re planning to continue it in 2026 with more guest contributors, new voices, and a wider scope of conversations. Some of our most popular pieces include:

• Bands are back (Arav Saraff, 16th October 2025)

• Gender representation at Indian music festivals (Prarthana Sen, 11th November 2025)

• Music review: Cubbon Park by Derek and the Cats (Prarthana Sen, 8th July 2025)

• Electronic music is human (Arav Saraff, 5th September 2025)

And.. that’s a wrap on our year, folks! Thank you for reading, sharing, engaging, and supporting everything we do. Have a wonderful and restful end to the year. We’ll be back in your inbox and on your feeds in the new year, ready to make some impact and have fun while we are at it, too!

Cheers,
The Neon Team

For the past few years, some of the most difficult choices I have made every year have been to do with which music festival or gigs to buy tickets for, and it’s usually a combination (in order of importance) of:

• the lineup (completely driven by personal preference, nostalgia etc)

• travel costs (is it local or in another city)

• ease of access with public transport (not having to worry about parking or drinking alcohol is a blessing!)

• weather conditions (my days of wading through a muddy ground are behind me)

Lineups are generally among the top deciding factors for most music fans when attending music festivals. But whenever any festival lineup announcements are shared online, music fans in India do what they do best - give their opinions loudly and vehemently. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because audience discourse is a good way to demand for better standards and access at music festivals. However, I also understand the mammoth effort, constant negotiation and thousands of big and little moving parts that go into successfully executing events of any scale and have a lot of empathy for organisers of large-scale music festivals whenever they’re attacked online for the artists on the lineup. The fact that we have all these choices is a testament to their efforts to grow this space and should not be overlooked amidst the noise of personal opinions!

While every fan grievance should not and realistically cannot be entertained by organisers, there is a pertinent issue that is important for me to highlight, which could hold major commercial benefits for the growth of this sector of the music industry, and that is the case for better gender representation at our music festivals.

Two reports from Luminate highlight the potential among fans who identify as women or belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. Live music fans from both these groups globally, despite attending fewer events than their male counterparts due to safety and other barriers, spend on average 5% and 20% more respectively on live events, merchandise and experiences. These numbers also imply that these groups have a higher prevalence of superfans among them, and their commercial spending potential is a committed act of fandom rather than a random, irregular purchase.

Chartmetric’s 2024 Make Music Equal report also highlights a global shift in artist representation as well. While the gap still remains in the industry’s top 100 artists who are predominantly solo men (54%), there are signs of change as women now make up 33% of this top tier, up from just 26% in 2020. In India, about 85% of the total artist composition identify as men, while the remaining 15% identify as female or non-binary. While this is a bigger gap than the global numbers, the trend here, too, shows a growth in the proportion of female and non-binary identifying artists over the last 4 years, signalling a trend that can be tracked to the global shift.

An analysis of 4 major upcoming music festival lineup compositions by gender throws up some interesting insights, based on which I have compiled a few thoughts as well. I used Chartmetric’s artist identifier tool to categorise initial pronouns for solo artists on the lineups, and Book More Women’s methodology to provide the full gender representation breakdown for groups/bands and the overall lineups.

Rolling Loud India

He/him: 85%, She/her: 12%, They/them: 3%

With its first edition slated to take place later this month, it comes as no surprise that Rolling Loud’s lineup in India reflects some of the lowest gender diversity observed across music festivals this year. Traditionally, Indian hip hop has been dominated by male performers, but we are seeing the steady growth of female and non-binary performers in this genre as well. Perhaps we will see more representation at future editions of this festival, too.

Echoes of Earth

He/him: 63%, She/her + they/them: 37%

With this festival, it was difficult to determine separate stats for the she/her and they/them categories, as a lot of artists performing in groups had a mix of gender identities reflected. Nevertheless, echoes of Earth continue to be more diverse in terms of gender representation than most other festivals.

Lollapalooza India

He/him: 70%, She/her + they/them: 30%

Another festival where it was challenging to separate the female and non-binary performer ratio owing to the presence of groups where these gender identities are represented equally, but Lollapalooza is the only upcoming major music festival with headlining acts showcasing artists who identify as female (especially on day 2), which is a promising shift away from what has been observed at music festivals so far!

Bandland

He/him: 74%, She/her: 20%, They/them: 6%

While the lineup diversity composition for this festival is generally aligned with the India-specific stats seen on Chartmetric’s data, we have seen a gradual improvement in the representation of artists identifying as she/her or they/them over the years and we hope to see continued growth from Bandland here. It would also be interesting to see how their audience composition may have changed with this shift, so if anyone has access to or insights into this data, leave a comment below!

So what does this mean for music festivals in India? There is scope to grow towards better gender diversity with shifting trends (both globally and nationally) with how artists are represented on the charts. Additionally, driving superfan engagement would mean unlocking the potential of women and LGBTQ+ communities, as they are set up to spend more and engage in true fan behaviour as experiences are made to be more in tune, keeping their preferences, safety and purchasing power in mind.

Should we break down more local festivals next, or have we missed any major upcoming ones for 2025/26? Let us know in the comments below!

Some of us can’t work without an ambient lo-fi mix looping in the background, others pick the perfect vibe for the gym, bangers for a house party or a way to pass time through that long office commute. And that got us thinking, what about you? We’d love to know how music fits into your day.

If any of these resonate with you, and music is your companion through your day, we want to hear from you! Here’s a short, anonymous survey designed to understand listeners who engage with mood music when they are doing other activities, and it should take less than 5 minutes to complete. The insights from this survey will enable us to curate better briefs for artists who create such music and make sure that your preferences are being reflected in their tracks.

TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

Also, it’s been a month since we released the Music City Report 2024–25: Bangalore & Kochi! 🎶 This edition expands to Kochi while revisiting Bangalore, offering a snapshot of how our music communities are growing & adapting, and what the next few years might hold.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, this is your sign to do it!

Music city report 2024-25

🎤 Artist Spotlights

Saachi
Saachi is an alt-R&B artist and producer who often marries different genres to paint pictures of self-identity and learning to be yourself.
From representing India at the JBL x Martin Garrix Music Academy (2024), being featured in Dazed Korea’s Asia 100 (2025), opening for Shaggy and The Vamps, to lending her voice to Emmy-nominated 4 More Shots Please!, Saachi continues to carve her space in the independent music scene.

“I want them to feel a sense of belonging when they listen to my music for the first time. Like this is the soundtrack of their lives”

Her debut album Wishbone (Oct 2025) mixes ‘90s R&B nostalgia with modern soul, delivering groovy, soulful tracks that feel like a friend telling hard truths while cheering you on.

Follow Saachi on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Niki Choudhury
Niki Choudhury is a dynamic Indian music artist making waves with her self-curated series Monthly Melodies. In just one year, she has released 10 tracks under her own label, 1 with Pehchan Music, and 2 collaborations, marking the completion of Season 1. Her biggest inspirations often come from movie characters, food, and K-drama plots, which add a playful yet emotional depth to her writing.

If my music were a place, it would be Sakura

Today, while pursuing her Ph.D. in Design at IIT Delhi, Niki continues to release her original music, blending her many artistic passions into her work. A

Follow Niki on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Detailed artist features on our Instagram

🎶 Neon’s Curated Playlists

Thank you to everyone who’s been sending in music for Neon’s Curated Playlists. It’s been such a joy to sit down and really listen. We update the playlists every month, so keep an eye out.

Artists- Submissions stay open, send your songs our way. Get a chance to get a feature in our artist spotlight series! Our next playlist update will be the last one before we wrap up for the year and get ready for a fresh new wave of sound.

Submit your music here!

Listeners/fans/tastemakers - Save the playlists & discover new indie songs. Every play helps these artists get heard.

Discover & Save playlists here!

The purpose of this personal anecdote was to interpolate lived experiences as a premise for my thesis that bands or artist collectives are making a comeback and will soon be shaping (or re-shaping?) the musical zeitgeist over the coming decade. Let’s explore this argument through the chronology of rock bands in India.

Early Days

Fast forwarding through the medieval and colonial era of Indian classical, jazz or brass bands, I began with the question - who was the first known Indian rock band? There seem to be multiple contenders across the 60s and early 70s in the form of Western rock cover bands across university circuits paying homage to the global wave of Beatles-inspired psychedelic rock. This is best represented by the Simla Beat’ 70 compilation album, a contest of the same name where winning bands recorded their versions of popular Western rock at the time (also check out Simla Beat’ 71). There is no single uncontested name because bands like The Cavaliers, The Combustibles, The Mustangs, The Vanguards, The Flintstones, The Savages, Human Bondage (wtf?) and Great Bear formed almost simultaneously across different cultural centres, with Kolkata and Mumbai leading the charge. (or in this case, Calcutta and Bombay?)

The Come Up

The first known Indian band that earned wide acclaim for their original music was Moheener Ghoraguli, formed in Kolkata in 1975. Their music drew from Bengali folk, Baul, urban American folk, and jazz creating a unique genre often described as “Baul jazz”. Their tale is an inspiring one and will continue to live on as a defining piece of contemporary Bengali music history. Going into the 80s and 90s, with globalization and the arrival of MTV, tastes rapidly changed, encouraging 90s bands to harden their sound and focus more on underground styles like alternative rock, metal, and progressive. This era of Indian rock is underlined by college festivals and the rise of Independence Rock, or I-Rock, which soon became a home for legendary names like Indus Creed (fka Rock Machine), Pentagram, Millennium, Demonic Resurrection, Parikrama and many more. The early 2000s started seeing massive fan following for more such bands like Indian Ocean and Euphoria, elevating them to pop status back then and cult classics of now. If you’re a curious cat like me and want to dig deeper, you can start here: Excellent Documentary About Indian Rock n Roll History

The Fall Off

Having gone through the glory days, it is important to unpack why rock and metal bands couldn’t see it through the advent of the digital age from the 2010s onwards. I would personally peg it down to the following:

• Lack of major label support as rock music was still considered niche in India and mostly popular among younger listeners with low spending power. It couldn’t provide a strong enough challenge to Bollywood, which was undoubtedly the most effective channel for discovery and distribution to mass audiences. So it’s not very surprising that a genre innately based on rebellion, non-conformity and rejection of authority, was an unlikely candidate for Indian major labels.

• Digital piracy and streaming brought about major changes in the consumption patterns and economics of music globally. With rock acts primarily relying on album sales promoted through live touring, MTV and radio, they found it tough to keep up with the fast moving dynamics of the singles format brought about by streaming. With growing access to advanced digital recording software, a single composer/producer could recreate the same magic that would otherwise need an ensemble and lots of expensive gear. Hence recording, touring and selling albums became increasingly tougher for bands with hardly any spoils to share equitably among the members.

• Lack of innovation and changing tastes is a harder pill to swallow but probably one of the strongest reasons for the decline of rock and metal. With hip-hop and electronic dance music emerging as much more accessible and youth-centric genres, they quickly took over playlists, festival stages and nightclubs throughout the 2010s, toppling rock as the incumbent leader of pop music culture. Surprisingly a genre that innately started off as anti-establishment, soon became the establishment to be unseated. Dad Rock is now an actual genre

The Comeback

As someone stuck right between Millennial dad rock evangelism and Gen-Z hip-hop / electronic futurism, I’m actually having a ball of a time. There is fresh music coming out at a much faster rate than one can consume, while live promoters are hitting all the right spots with a perfect blend of nostalgia and discovery. New international bands like Sleep Token and Turnstile are making waves, while legacy acts like Oasis are reuniting. Homegrown bands like Peter Cat Recording Co and Bloodywood are making global leaps, with a vibrant pool of emerging bands building a base across local circuits. But the top highlight for me this year has to be:

LINKIN PARK IS FUCKING BACK!! - Music nerds often find it appalling to answer the question “Who’s your favourite artist?”. But for me LP takes the cake. Simply because where else can you find rock, metal, rap and electronic all rolled into one? With the devastating news of Chester Bennington’s passing on my birthday 8 years ago, I thought they would just remain a dear piece of my childhood to be held onto. And now I suddenly get to see them live?? In India?? With new songs?? Thank god for Emily Armstrong (and BookMyShow).

The Indian live circuit is exploding and will soon rival global markets, with legacy international acts gracing our stages alongside emerging and established domestic acts, across every genre imaginable. This rebuilds the much-needed direct channel for emerging bands to promote their music as digital and streaming fatigue starts to set in.

Let’s look the percentage split of multi-member groups versus solo/duo acts in Lollapalooza India lineups since inception:

• 2023: 13 groups vs 27 solo/duo, roughly 30 / 70. Notable bands included international heavy hitters like Imagine Dragons, The Strokes, Cigarettes after Sex and domestic indie acts like Yellow Diary, Bloodywood, aswekeepsearching, The F16s, Till Apes, Easy Wanderlings

• 2024: 16 groups vs 22 solo/duo, roughly 40 / 60. Notable international bands included Jonas Brothers, Keane, Royal Blood, OneRepublic, Jungle, with domestic acts like The Raghu Dixit Project, Skrat, Jatayu, Long Distances and more

• 2025: 5 groups vs 27 solo/duo, roughly 15 / 85. While the total number of bands took a dip, let’s keep in mind the cost of bringing a giant legacy act like Green Day to India alongside Glass Animals, Nothing but Thieves and Wave to Earth. The remaining lineup largely reflected the peak popularity of hip hop acts and global DJs / producers

• 2026: 12 groups vs 29 solo/duo, roughly 30 / 70. Linkin Park has to be the highlight while Playboi Carti is the more unexpected headliner choice for me. The remaining lineup is actually quite vibrant with emerging and established Indian bands alongside a very exciting roster of electronic acts and DJs.

While Lollapalooza India is the premier contemporary music festival at least for me, Bandland is actually the IP that strongly proves the idea of rock bands making it back into the mainstream. With Muse being announced as the 2026 headliner alongside Train and Karnivool, the past 2 editions have featured legendary acts like Deep Purple, Goo Goo Dolls, Avenged Sevenfold and Extreme.

If you went back in time to 2010 and told an Indian rock/metal fan that all of the above artists would one day be coming to India within the span of 3 years, they would have laughed in your face. So let’s appreciate the absolutely wild times we’re living in, and hope that such festivals and IPs will soon become a launchpad for emerging Indian bands to take the global stage.

The Virtual Crossover

At this point, I started wondering if this article was getting too long but I would be remiss not to mention the virtual elephant in the room. This section was inspired by a recent video essay by one of my favourite youtubers, ‘Mic The Snare’: When Fake Bands Feel More Real Than Humans

Without getting into the weeds of morality, artistic integrity and cultural shock that often underline any AI music related debate, I want to first clarify that virtual or digital bands have always been around. I’ll just leave you with 3 separate case studies for you to draw your own conclusions.

• Gorillaz: An undeniably awesome collaboration between music and animation, brought about by two undeniably authentic artists Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, they’ve been around as the world’s foremost virtual music collective for over 2 decades. In fact, they recently announced their upcoming 9th studio album ‘Mountain’ which is so heavily India-coded that it feels like we’re living in an alternate timeline. In my eyes, this is enough proof that EVEN VIRTUAL BANDS are making a real comeback and India could soon be at the forefront of this global cultural moment.

  

• K-pop Demon Hunters: An unexplainable phenomenon of pop music in 2025, this animated Netflix film follows a K-pop girl group, Huntr/x who lead double lives as demon hunters. They face off against a rival boy band, the Saja Boys, whose members are secretly demons. Now here’s the crazy part - the single ‘Golden’ from the film’s soundtrack has gone PLATINUM and has been at the top of Billboard charts for multiple weeks now. This is absolutely unheard of for such a virtual group. But wait, it gets even better:

  • This soundtrack was crafted by Visva Records, a brainchild of Savan Kotecha, the venerable songwriter of INDIAN ORIGIN who was the driving force behind One Direction. But wait, there’s even more.

  • Visva Records is also building an Indian boy band named Outstation which was scouted through a good old talent hunt across Indian states. They’ve managed to do a self-promoted 6 city tour, drawing an audience of over 3500 WITHOUT EVEN PUTTING OUT A SINGLE TRACK. (just clarifying, this is a real band and not virtual)

• Trilok: India’s first fully AI-powered spiritual rock band (trust me this was not on my 2025 bingo card) which put out an AI-generated rendition of the age-old devotional track Achyutam Keshavam. I won’t pass any opinions or judgement here, but just a quick anecdote: I showed this track to my mum who’s deeply spiritual just to get her opinion on it, and in response she played me Sonu Nigam’s rendition of the same track. There wasn’t much left for me to say after that, but again I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

As a childhood cartoon-network addict and occasional anime enjoyer, I’m slightly biased towards virtual universes simply because of the infinite possibilities that an animated medium can lend to any creator with an unbound imagination. Having said that, we can’t forget that it is still the human creator who puts soul into the story being told, and is leaving behind a legacy for us consumers to enjoy long after they’re gone.

Oh, and once the maestro of Indian music himself has decided to bless AI music, who are we really to doubt him? (And what is this sudden obsession with Mountains?)

In Conclusion

I hope the above pointers have added some weight to my postulate of musical groups making a resurgence in the cultural zeitgeist, be it in physical or virtual spaces, be it globally or at home in India. To think of a deeper reason as to why, I imagine it has something to do with the collective fatigue of hyper-individualism that the digital age has brought about. After all, we are social creatures with an inner desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. And when it comes to music or art, I’d like to think the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.

Thanks for sticking around this far! As always, I’m happy to be proven wrong or called out — be my guest to start a debate in the comments. Before you go, here’s a non-exhaustive list of bands that will always be dear to me along with the track that introduced me to them:

International

• Linkin Park - Papercut

• Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams

• Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Can’t Stop

• Alter Bridge - Metalingus

• Dream Theater - Forsaken

• Slipknot - Psychosocial

• Porcupine Tree - Blackest Eyes

• Bullet For My Valentine - Tears Don’t Fall

• System of a Down - Hypnotize

Indian

• Local Train - Aaoge Tum Kabhi

• Yellow Diary - Buniyaad

• Motherjane - Chasing the Sun

• When Chai Met Toast - Khoj (Passing By)

• Peter Cat Recording Co - Floated By

• Indus Creed - Fireflies

• Junkyard Groove - It’s Ok

Please feel free to namedrop bands you like in the comments and a track to introduce me to them, and maybe we could make a playlist out of it!

📊 Music City Report 2024-25: Bangalore & Kochi

We ran the music city survey for a second time between August 2024 to March 2025, and finally have all the data analysed, with insights and recommendations from our end too! Here’s our blog post on it, for a quick starter on how it went.

This year, we were excited to expand the survey to Kochi and record insights from Bangalore for the second time which gave us the first glimpse into trends from the city as well - imagine what this data will look like in 5 years from now! For those of you looking for a shorter read, this executive summary should cover it, but we highly recommend digging into the more granular information available in the full report.

This report has been months in the making, and we’re thrilled to finally share it:

Music city report 2024-25

🗺️ Mapped Recap

Earlier this month, we co-presented Mapped, India’s first creative data forum, alongside Orange Juice Lab - a huge thanks to founder Jay Anand (the real brains behind this) for bringing us into his vision and trusting us to partner with him for this progressive event!

A virtual get-together for music and data nerds, it was a day dedicated to unpacking the Indian music landscape through research reports, industry insights and expert panels. Topics included underreported realities of the Indian music economy and emerging opportunities in micro-markets such as regional, devotional or independent music. We closed off the day with a note on the future of Indian music and a report on gender equity in the global music industry.

An attendee was heard saying, “It felt like a candy shop for music nerds.”

A huge thank-you to everyone who tuned in, engaged in discussions, and shared perspectives that will shape how the industry moves forward.

🎤 Artist Spotlights

We’ve kicked off our Artist Spotlight series with two incredible features this month.

Tanmaya Bhatnagar
India-born and Germany-based, Tanmaya creates soft, personal, and achingly honest songs. She began writing as a way to understand her world.

“Songwriting is how I make sense of how everything feels.”

Through her music, she offers a space where vulnerability is welcome and listeners are reminded they’re not alone. Beyond music, her creativity flows into poetry, mixed media art, and her handmade jewellery label Pyaare Phool. With her upcoming Hindi EP, she continues to share work that is honest, raw, and deeply human.

Follow Tanmaya on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Vidhi Poddar
An emerging voice in India’s independent music landscape, Vidhi brings together intimacy and expansiveness in her sound. Having trained since the age of 5, she carries the discipline of her early years into a style that feels warm, persistent, and deeply human. Inspired by her mother, her music reflects both grounding and exploration- “something she likens to being in the mountains.”
With every song, Vidhi invites listeners into connections that feel as natural as conversation..

Follow Vidhi on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Detailed artist features on our Instagram

🎶 Neon’s Curated Playlists

Thank you to everyone who’s been sending in music for Neon’s Curated Playlists. It’s been such a joy to sit down and really listen. We update the playlists every month, so keep an eye out.

Artists- Submissions stay open. Got something new out? Send it our way. Get a chance to get a feature in our artist spotlight series!

Submit your music here!

Listeners/fans/tastemakers - Save the playlists & discover new indie songs. Every play helps these artists get heard.

Discover & Save playlists here!

This report is proof that the Bangalore and Kochi music communities are actively thinking of their future, building systems and processes that work for them despite little to no policy-level support and are ready to take the steps needed to build a more robust music ecosystem that supports artists, music industry professionals and fans.

To everyone reading this post - We invite you to dive in to the report, share it with your networks, report on it if you have the platform to do so and pave the way with us for a resilient music industry!

Music city 2024-25 report: Download here

Things we carried over from the first version of the research

As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it (or something of the sort), we kept a few things untouched in this version of the music city survey. Responses remained anonymous (it encourages the most honest answers), age and income bands remained the same (keeping our demographic parameters constant helps establish a baseline point of data to jump off of), and we didn’t forcefully push for people to take the survey, our outreach was still very organic and community-led. Given that the vision we have is to build a long term, reliable data source (the dream is to make this interactive as well) that we can use for advocacy and that various people can refer to as per their needs, we prefer taking time to grow the respondent pool year on year through tapping into the networks of our trusted partners and building new alliances with like-minded partners who will align with these research goals and support our outreach as well.

What we did differently this year

Since this is a very new survey, we also have the room to try out new things based on feedback, intuition and changing industry trends to get the most out of our research every year. While a lot of our questions around income among artists and professionals and spending among fans were similar to last year, we were excited to introduce a series of questions to dive deeper into the sources of income and areas where most of the money is spent by the different stakeholder groups. We also introduced a section to measure attitudes and behaviour patterns among the stakeholders. This was designed in two parts, as yes/no questions to measure general business setup and awareness, and also as a 4 point scale for a series of statements to understand what proportion of respondents agree or disagree with observed trends in the music industry. This opened up a whole array of insights the way music stakeholders in these two cities feel or behave towards certain music industry standards that are taken for granted or assumed at the macro level.

Key insights (and Neon’s wishlist)

1. The most urgent demand across respondents in both cities is for a standardised payment system and legal protections for artist livelihoods, which we have interpreted to also extend to music industry professional livelihoods. Currently, the reality is that strong safeguards for creative workers and their rights do not exist. If anyone has ideas on how to start understanding this layered issue, we are all ears!

2. Music fans are able and willing to spend more money than ever before on live music experiences, and there are superfans to be found in even the most niche pockets of independent music. However, local artists need to match this demand and need the help of other stakeholders to find the channels that enable them to connect with these fan communities. If there are any tech or product leaning minds innovating in this space - we have data that may prove useful to you!

We’re not giving away too much on this post as we would like for you to read the report and interpret the information yourself, but for those looking for a quick glance into the main recommendations we have put forward - here’s an executive summary as well!

In an attempt to trace the origins of this cult, I put on my tinfoil hat to find out when and where the electronic music spaceship really landed in India. A google search and a youtube rabbithole later, I found the answer to be an unlikely yet likely place — the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Yeah, that tracks.

The NID Tapes: Electronic Music From India 1969​-​1972, was probably the first recorded and widely acclaimed instance of purely machine generated music in the country. On the first listen, it’s actually just alien sounds. But if you teleport yourself over to the first electronic music studio in 1970s Ahmedabad, you might hear some curious kids tripping on a MOOG synthesizer, just having a good time. Guess how much pitchfork rated the album?

Synthesizers and disco beats then found their way into the hands of mad scientists like:

• RD Burman who used it to define the sound of Bollywood in the early 80s

• Indian-british producer Biddu who teamed up with Pakistani teenage sensation Nazia Hassan, to craft “Disco Deewane” - Asia’s best-selling pop album at the time

• Bappi Lahiri, an epitome of maximalism who amplified the Bollywood disco movement all the way over to the Soviet Union with his apex number “Disco Dancer”

• Charanjit Singh who famously, “accidentally invented acid house” i.e alien sounds over house beats

Ever since, electronic music has been a subtle yet ever-present undercurrent of Indian pop culture. With DJs and producers taking centre stage, the big bang explosion of electronic dance music marked the turn of the 21st century. While technology made life more and more digital, it ironically made music even more physical.

From millennial pioneers like Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale, to envelope-pushers like KSHMR, Lost Stories, Nucleya and Ritviz, new-age producers fused deeply emotional Indian melodies with progressive global beats, lighting up festival stages while crafting soundtracks to the aspirations of an entire Indian generation. Rave culture started permeating from ground up, with the ports of Goa and Mumbai at the center of the global exchange. Today I can’t grab a coffee or take my daily commute without imagining a DJ console in the background.

As we speak, the Indian electronic soundscape has evolved into a deep, vibrant jungle (pun intended) led by DJs, producers, stories, and sounds as a function of the almost infinite tools now available at a creator’s disposal. The core element of an electronic beat lends itself to any other genre seamlessly — with domestic examples across pop, hip-hop, classical, jazz, funk, progressive, post-rock, industrial noise, and shoegaze — opening up possibilities of nuclear fusion limited only by the human imagination.

Here are 10 Indian electronic tracks from the recent decade that I like, in no particular order:

• Ishq | Donn Bhat | Video Donn Bhat - Ishq

• Jiya Lage Na Full Video | Talaash | Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee Sona Mohapatra, Ram Sampath- Jiya Lage Na (From ‘Talaash’)

• DARZI - Nazar DARZI - Nazar

• KSHMR & Lost Stories - Bombay Dreams [feat. Kavita Seth] (Official Music Video) KSHMR & Lost Stories [feat. Kavita Seth] - Bombay Dreams

• Bombay Rhapsody [Official Music Video] MALFNKTION - Bombay Rhapsody

• Ritviz - Udd Gaye [Official Audio] Ritviz - Udd Gaye

• Rangi Saari | Kanishk Seth & Kavita Seth | Official Music Video Kanishk Seth & Kavita Seth - Rangi Saari

• Lifafa - Ek Nagma | Sofar Delhi NCR Lifafa - Ek Nagma

• Silent Days Anhad + Tanner - Silent Days

These are just the tip of the iceberg and I’ve definitely missed a lot of tracks worth a namedrop, so comment and let us know if you’d like the full setlist. ;)

In conclusion, I truly empathize with those who reject AI music. As a former denier of artificial music myself, my experience with the different forms of electronic music has re-affirmed my belief that music is merely a medium. The real value lies in the story being told. While ethical challenges must be reconciled, technology has always been about enabling the human mind to push the limits of its own imagination, and art is merely the outlet through which we express that desire.

We spent a lot of our time this month sorting through compliance, paperwork and getting everything in order for taxes and realised that while it sounds intimidating, keeping things organised throughout the year and seeking advice from professionals who specialise in these areas makes it possible to navigate and learn how to get better at these admin tasks every year.

We also gave our website a much-needed revamp, continue to struggle with Linktree not being available properly in the India territory (is anyone else experiencing this as well and if yes how are you dealing?) and have been doing our best to stay on top of our marketing and social media calendars.

Admin, compliances and tax reporting aside, here’s a glimpse into what the Neon team has been upto:

😱 Mapped is three weeks away!

Our first virtual event that we are co-presenting with Orange Juice Labs is exactly three weeks away! We have loved working with Jay on this, and started rolling out announcements of the speakers, sessions and the schedule you can expect at this event. We hope to see a lot of you online on the 19th of September!

We are very excited to bring together academic researchers, music professionals, representatives of micro scenes and global data platforms together for a full day of immersive learning, and we truly believe we have programmed an event that will benefit a lot of different types of stakeholders working in and around music. And the best part - you can attend this from the comfort of your home since it’s completely virtual! Tickets are available now, and if you are looking to make a group booking for your company or get some discounts if you’re a student or artist, reply to us for more details.

Get your tickets here!

💬 Neon’s next-gen at All About Music 2025

The Neon team had a busy week at All About Music 2025, and we took back tote bags full of insights, connections and inspiration. The connect corner was especially bustling with energy and collaborative spirit. A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by to meet Arav and Nitya. If you picked up some Neon stickers, we hope they’ve found fun new homes on your laptops, bottles, or notebooks, and don’t forget to tag us when they do!

It was also wonderful catching up with our friends from the DeccanAlt and Neon communities; nothing beats being in the same space, sharing ideas, and dreaming up what’s next together.

🎤 Artist Spotlights

We’ve kicked off our Artist Spotlight series with two incredible features this month.

Hulo (Aditya)
Born and raised in Kolkata and now based in Berlin, Hulo is crafting a genre he lovingly calls Calcutta-Pop. With his debut album Griefcase dropping this year, he’s leaning into a bold, synth-pop rock sound that’s as fun to play live as it is to listen to.

“I write in the chaos of my living room or through rush hour traffic… the traffic or my grandma’s yelling have turned into soothing lullabies.”

Follow Hulo on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Shubham Roy
Based in Bangalore, Shubham has been writing and performing for over a decade, with film credits like 777 Charlie and indie singles like Aankhi and Dheere. Together with lyricist Shiny Das, he continues to build music that feels honest, relatable, and rooted in everyday life.

“Lately, it’s a cocktail of everyday monotony, doomscrolling, the warmth of feeling loved, and random childhood memories that sneak up on me. Somehow, it all brews into something worth singing about over a cup of chai.”

Follow Shubham on Spotify & Instagram. Listen to their new music here!

Detailed artist features on our Instagram.

🎶 Neon’s curated playlists

Thank you to everyone who’s been sending in music for Neon’s Curated Playlists. We’ve received a wave of new submissions this month, and it’s been such a joy to sit down and really listen.

We’ll be updating the playlists soon, so keep an eye out. Whether you’re an artist submitting tracks or a listener looking for something new, this is where the gems live.

Artists- Submissions stay open. Got something new out? Send it our way. Get a chance to get a feature in our artist spotlight series!

Submit your music here!

Listeners/fans/tastemakers - Save the playlists & discover new indie songs. Every play helps these artists get heard.

Discover & Save playlists here!

But an artist announces a full-length album and i’m literally hitting pre-save immediately - that’s a whole body of work, the songs are thought out and put in order for a reason, and there’s a story they’re telling. For music fans like me, that’s the reason we listen, discover, engage and repeat the whole cycle again.

The first full album I listened to from start to finish was Oh Gravity by Switchfoot, a few months after it’s release sometime in 2006. I didn’t have a lot of pocket money to speak of, so it was ripped off a CD that a very kind friend lent to me for day and I listened to it atleast once a day for the 2 weeks following it - much to the annoyance of my family as they were all privy to it blasting through the desktop speakers every evening. To this day, I remember the order of songs, most of the lyrics, how the transitions in between songs made me feel and give me a similar heady rush of emotions whenever I go back to listening to it now. In a way, it’s a sense memory of my teenage experience.

As a music fan, I would equate the experience of listening to an album to savouring a well-designed multi-course meal for a foodie, enjoying a test match unfold over time for cricket fans, or reading a complex, heartbreaking novel over a week for the readers out there. These are experiences best enjoyed gradually, with every course, innings or chapter bring with it varying revelations and emotions, and something you look back on as a whole.

Not very differently, the energy graphs of albums hit your listening experience with varying amounts of intensity. Every album is also constructed differently, some designed to constantly go up in energy, some designed to start on a high, dip at some point and go up again and some ending on a contemplative note that will leave you deep in your feelings. There’s a whole other blog post to be written about listening to your favourite or important albums at different points in your life, and how your listening experience changes with your life experience but I digress.

There has been a general drop in albums being released in current times, but I do believe listening preferences are cyclical in nature and we will see a resurgence in the next few years. There is data to support this too, but that’s for another post that’s not an opinion piece!

Instead, I wanted to share few notable albums that I keep going back to and savour everytime I listen to them, with a cup of coffee on a weekend, on a long drive or just in between breaks on a busy day of work:

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Leon Bridges (2024)

Dead & Born & Grown (2012)

Saathiya (2002)

In Rainbows (2007)

The xx (2009)

If you have some albums that you keep going back to, or have strong recollections with, share them in the comments below too so we can listen to them at Neon HQ!

With the rise of playlist culture, more and more artists are compelled to go down the route of only releasing singles at a regular frequency. These singles are getting progressively shorter in length too, and I suspect this has some correlation to the alarming rate at which we scroll through reels/shorts and falling attention spans among the wider population. While I understand the economic and commercial appeal of this approach, I do wonder if the artists releasing singles only are feeling content about their art? I imagine that creative folks, at their core, would be heavily invested in creating complex or longer bodies of work that stir up emotions, convey their feelings and opinions and pieces they look back on as a time in their life and think about the person, experiences and things they stood for when creating that as well.

So here’s an open message for the artists stuck in the dilemma of should I release the single or spend the time writing an album: Do both, you can pitch your singles to the streaming platforms but also write the album! There are a lot of us who will wait for it, and savour it when it releases, and several times after too.

Disclaimer: Everything written here is a collection of personal opinions, and i’m very open to discussing this if you feel otherwise - maybe i’m not listening to singles properly or missing out on a key aspect of music discovery through this preference for albums?

We also share that our co-founder, Vishruti Bindal, has recently stepped away from Neon. We’re grateful for her contributions to our early work and wish her continued success in her creative journey.

After a period of reflection and restructuring, we enter this new era with renewed energy, deeper clarity, a stronger team and the grit to treat growth with even more intention. We’re deepening our focus on creative research, strategic advisory, and powerful long-term collaborations with like-minded partners, all anchored in building sustainable systems for India and South Asia’s independent music ecosystem.

In these past few months, our small but mighty team has led several projects across music research, strategic advisory, and ecosystem-building with resilience, thoughtfulness, and care. This edition of Freestyle is focused on what’s coming next, where to follow along for updates, and how you can be a part of our community.

Neon’s Curated Playlists

Neon’s Curated Playlists are updated for the first time ever! And some of these tracks completely caught us off guard- in the best way.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been doing something we hadn’t done in a while: really listening. Not skipping halfway through a track or letting it fade into the background while we work, but the kind of listening where you’re completely tuned in: excited, surprised, and suddenly pausing to ask, “Wait, who is this?!” And let us tell you, it has been a wild ride! And hey, if you want a shortcut to getting Arav to stan your track? Metal and rock submissions are the way to go!

🧠 Here’s what we said while curating:

And that is exactly why we brought these playlists back. To create space for discovery, to surface artists we might’ve missed, and to remind ourselves (and hopefully you too) that there’s a whole world of talent out there, waiting to be heard. It reminded us just how much incredible music is out there, often flying under the radar.

So whether you’re making music, discovering it, or helping others find it, we’d love for you to be part of this.

Artists - Submissions are open! Neon’s Curated Playlists are updated on a monthly(ish) rotation, and our next refresh is scheduled in the coming weeks. If you’ve just dropped a new track or know someone who has music out that needs to be discovered, send it over. We’re listening!

Submit your music here

Music fans / Tastemaker - If you’re tired of the same four songs chasing you across every app, check out the playlists. We update them regularly, and every stream or save genuinely helps the artists featured.

Discover & Save the playlists here

If you want to get involved or help amplify the music we’re featuring reach out on info@neonculture.in or DM us on IG. We’d love to collaborate.

Mapped - India’s creative data forum

We are partnering with Orange Juice, a brand new R&D lab set up by Jay Anand earlier this year, to bring to life “Mapped” in September 2025. This will be a first-of-its-kind fully virtual event, designed to bring clarity to India’s music industry through data, research, and real-world insight. It connects artists, platforms, researchers, educators, and organisations to make sense of how the music economy is evolving — structurally, culturally, and commercially.

Jay has worn several hats in the music industry over past decade - artist, entrepreneur, product manager, educator - to name just a few and when he first spoke to us about his idea for a fully virtual data summit, we could not think of a collaborator and event better suited to our mission and interests to jump in on!

We will be sharing more about tickets, programming and access to the event soon, but if you’d like to keep up with everything related to Mapped:

Join the waitlist here

Interested in partnering with us or speaking at Mapped? Reach out to us on info@neonculture.in - let’s talk!

Listen in - A podcast/sit-back series + special performances

We are also excited to be a part of Listen In, a platform dedicated to deep dive into, document and explore the inspirations and journey of independent artists in India, accompanied with special performances by some of the voices shaping the sound of Indian Music today.

We have been ideating this series in collaboration with Magnisium Media, a creative agency based out of Bangalore, for just under a year now, and to say it’s been all sorts of chaotic fun is an understatement. When you put a group of millennial music fans in a room together, what emerges is part passion-project driven by being in the creative industries for the better part of a decade, and part conscious choice to build long-form content to break the cycle of shorts and reels with ever-shrinking attention spans that dominate mainstream media now.

Our first artist feature (any guesses? 👀) and special performance video drops later this week. Make sure you can follow the IG page and subscribe to the YouTube channel to make sure you don’t miss it:

Follow here for updates!

Neon Culture at All About Music 2025!

Last but not least - Neon’s next generation is gearing up for All About Music 2025!

Meet Nitya Menon and Arav Saraff at the Connect Corner this year, and find out more about our work across:

• strategic consulting and R&D for organisations across music

• artist development initiatives

• independent research + other initiatives to support the development of the Indian creative industries

If you’d like to set up a meeting with Nitya and/or Arav in person at the conference, write to us on info@neonculture.in with a request and we’ll take it forward from there. You may even get your hands on some custom Neon merch - the only way to find out is to meet us there!

If you haven’t bought your tickets for All About Music yet, we have a code with a discount that you can avail of. Just head to this link and enter the code NC10 in the offers section of the checkout page for 10% off!

📱Follow them on IG here

🎧 Listen to the song here: On Apple Music or Spotify

🎥 Watch the Music Video here

🎫 Get tickets to their next show here: Bombay (19th July) or Bangalore (25th July)

Homegrown instrumental dance music band, Derek & The Cats presents an ode to Bangalore with their latest single, “Cubbon Park.”

At a recent performance of the song in Cubbon Park (iconic in it’s own right as no bands have performed there for a few years) in May 2025, frontman Derek Mathias said, “Alicia Keys wrote about New York, other artists write about their home cities and immortalise them through their music. As a Bangalore band, we wanted to write something for our home city, and this is the song that captures it.”

Whether you’re a resident or visitor to Bangalore, chances are that you have at least heard of (if not visited) Cubbon Park - one of the city’s few remaining green lungs as the rest of it expands and buckles under the construction of tech parks, ultra luxury apartments and villas in every nook and cranny of the city. With an increasingly hectic lifestyle led by the working population of the city, Cubbon Park serves as a refuge (especially on weekends) for people to spend some time de-stressing, working out, reading and enjoying such activities alone, with their friends and with their furry companions as well.

The foundations of the song are set in place with a laid-back beat and a simple piano and bass riff that establishes the sunny, happy feeling of visiting the park. To this they sprinkle in what I can only describe as a “Sunday soiree” saxophone line, and some playful guitar noodles which are intentionally placed to play off of the other rhythms you hear. The playfulness of the track is further elevated by some fun percussion in between lines, while the organ brings in a layer of depth and restraint to the whole sonic experience. As a listener, I particularly enjoyed the buildup with the organ, drums, saxophone and guitar, followed by the addition of what sounds like a story narration and a conversation between friends right after it. This eases into a very characteristic and comforting Derek & The Cats breakdown into a walking bass line and change in groove with layers of piano, guitar and saxophone added on top, ultimately bringing you back to the opening motif of the song before it finishes. It’s a full circle, coming back to where we started, just like a brisk walk or run round one of the Cubbon park paths ultimately brings us to a great spot to eat dosa! I highly recommend listening to this track on headphones, but it’s also an excellent song to add to your road-trip playlist and listen to while driving to Cubbon Park (or any park) for that matter.

While the sonic experience itself is delightful and does not tire out the ears despite being a 6 minute track, the music video is the real delight to watch and I find myself taking breaks from a very busy work day to watch it at least once every 2 weeks or so even now. The snippets of regular people narrating what the park means to them will certainly get a smile started on your face when you’re watching, but the most chaotic and endearing part of the video when Appam aka the star of the music video is let loose to run around and show us what we mere humans are missing out on, not being a dog in Cubbon Park! The band have also included snippets of their performance from their performance in the park, captured snippets of what’s involved when you visit Cubbon Park (frisbee, climbing trees, eating snacks, finishing with dosa and general park shenanigans with friends and family), and a very skilled video team have cut and edited it together to tell a story of a typical Sunday morning for many Bangaloreans.

Derek & The Cats have been independently releasing music since 2022 and touring extensively across the country, which is a commendable task to undertake for a 7 member band. They also have the additional barrier of being an instrumental band, which a lot of people and music fans are not naturally drawn to unless it’s electronic dance music or some variation of it. But with consistency and honesty in their online and offline presence, they have managed to break down some of these barriers and have crowds singing their instrumental riffs with them across the country now!

It is very inspiring to see them take such pride in their hometown and create a song that will immortalise a feeling, a place and a time that we are likely to not have for very long with the rate of “development.” If you’re still here reading this, I would highly recommend (again) that you add this song to your libraries if you haven’t already, and watch the music video an unhealthy number of times because of the pure joy it radiates.

With their next album slated to release later this year, we cannot wait for the sonic experience that is in store. They have two shows coming up in Bombay and Bangalore later in July so we recommend that you take your friend, partner or mom to one (or both) of them for a good time!

But a more recent, terrifying factor is contributing to new music discovery and active listening declining in people as young as 24. Algorithms on streaming platforms. Algorithm-driven music is making people apathetic to new music at an alarming rate, as it promotes less than 5% of the music available on them based on number of streams, and this too ends up as background music most of the time anyway. To add to this, listeners are overwhelmed by the mass of choice available at their fingertips so they fall back on the algorithm to suggest music to listen to. It’s a terrifying loop, and reflects on us as a society shifting to becoming lazy music fans.

We have prided ourselves on being music nerds at Neon, but this got us reflecting on some of our own behaviours around music discovery. While some of our relatively young team have still not hit the average age where scientific evidence backs the decline in new music discovery, we do often go to algorithm generated playlists and put it on in the background while working, excercising and so on. We could be doing more to actively discover, listen to and share new music with our community. So we set ourselves a challenge to kickstart our playlisting initiatives again, and this time we are relying on good old-fashioned curation by the team (who have to actively listen to new music to share it with others), while also welcoming submissions from artists releasing new music across India because of the sheer volume of new releases everyday!

So, without further ado, we are introducing Neon’s Curated Playlists. This is our effort to discover new music and challenge the status quo of algorithm-driven playlists by putting forward human-curated playlists that put the spotlight on artists in a few different ways.

If you are an artist, check out our submission form below, share it with your fellow artist peers and send your music through - we are listening 👇🏼

Submit your music here

If you are a music fan interested in discovering new music and not letting your curiosity die as you age, save the playlists here and tell your friends about them, too. After all, each save is a new listener for the artists who are sharing their music with us. We’d love for more people to listen to them 🎧

Discover music here

If you are a label, collective or other music community, please spread the word to your artists and community as well. Join us in this mini-movement/experiment to defy the algorithm and keep music discovery alive, even while corporate structures, neuroscience and societal factors stack the odds against us as we get older!

But don’t take our word for it, read it yourself and write to us with feedback, thoughts and comments:

DeccanAlt 2025 - The Full Report

We also have shorter versions of the report to deep dive into specific aspects of the event:

1. Executive Summary

2. Conference Report

3. Showcase Report

DeccanAlt Showcase alumni release spotlight

Putting this report together got us wondering - what have our DeccanAlt Showcase artists been upto? Yes, of course we follow them all on their social media accounts and keep up with their regular posts, but we wanted to take it a step further and really celebrate their work.

So we went down a wonderful musical rabbit hole and compiled a list of new releases from our showcasing artists in 2025 so far and were pleasantly surprised to realise that all these releases are in regional languages as well!

Here is a chronological list of the freshest independent sounds from India that we highly recommend you listen to, and add all of them to your libraries as well:

Nichesluck - Kadhal idhu thana (Released on 22nd January)

Apart from looking forward to all the great music from her this year, we have also been thoroughly enjoying and learning new ways of saree-draping from Anisha’s IG series of brand new and invented saree drapes for her show outfits! 😍

Gauley Bhai - Sunbari (Released on 4th April)

With a cult following of their own (which includes the Neon team as well), we keep our eyes peeled for announcements of this epic band coming to tour in any of the cities we are present in. We guarantee that you will want to play this album continuously after the first listen, and then want to catch them live in your city too! 🌞

Papabear - Lamhe (Released on 11th April)

His first release in Hindi, is every bit as warm and nostalgic as everything by papabear. We were fortunate to hear this live, and this track has been on loop at the Neon HQ ever since it’s release a few weeks ago. 🐻

Meera - aasaan mohabbattein (Released on 11th April)

Another debut Hindi single from our cohort, this one is a sweet tune written and released by Meera and Sagar Verma, both exceptional singer-songwriters among the many other musical hats they wear! 💛

Fat Krrent - KARM (Released on 11th April)

Our favourite rapper released this track in collaboration with Dhi Harmony, spinning up a relatable set of verses about hopes, dreams, fears and triumphs that comes with a move to a new city. What’s more - he’s already announced his next track releasing on 5th August and we could not be more excited for all the music coming from him! 😎

Alva Kuuto - Self titled debut album (Released on 11th April)

Having followed Alva Kuuto’s journey since last year, we are proud to be associated with a band that is preserving a piece of cultural heritage through their music. Understanding their vision to take the ancient language Tulu to the world stage, this debut album is an example of nuanced, mature music-making and we are certain this is only the beginning for this eclectic band! 🙌🏼

Aksomaniac - Kanmashi (Out on 6th May!)

With exactly a week to go for Kanmashi’s release, we can’t be more excited for Aksomaniac’s Malayalam music to make waves like the cultural moment it is! It’s safe to say it’s about to be streamed nonstop by all of us at Neon. If this isn’t already an artist you follow on Spotify, we’d recommend getting on it ASAP. 🚀

We’re hoping to keep up the monthly cadence of this newsletter with learnings and takeaways from our work each month from now on. But we are also learning that that it’s often challenging to stay consistent with planned communications, especially during very busy periods like the last few months, and it’s okay to take a break when we are stretched too thin.

Onto the actual recap, here’s what we have been upto these past few months:

Music city survey 📝

Our annual music city survey is now open for responses until 31st March, 2025. And this year, apart from Bangalore, we have also opened the survey up for the music ecosystem in Kochi! If you an artist, music professional or music fan based in either Kochi or Bangalore, use the button below to take our survey:

Take our Music City Survey!

This is Neon’s effort to build a reliable primary data source recording the successes, challenges and trends of the independent music ecosystem based on insights from the primary stakeholders in this space. We need to hear from those actively involved in music ecosystems at a city-level and use this data to actively advocate for and build better support systems around music in each city. It takes a whole community to drive change, so give us your insights, tell your friends about this research and join us to start advocating for better policies and support around music in our cities.

(Not so) New (anymore) Neon team members 🎨

We added 2 new team members in October 2024 - Arav Saraff (Project Coordinator) and Nitya Menon (Marketing Coordinator for DeccanAlt) who have been instrumental in seeing through a lot of Neon’s consulting work and marketing tasks over the last 6 months, and especially in the weeks leading up to the conference. With Neon being extremely non-traditional in the way we work (fully remote and flexible hours), we asked for autonomy and accountability from our team and they rose to the challenge.

For anyone who hasn’t met them on calls or at Neon events in the past few months, do check out Nitya and Arav’s work online - they are deeply passionate about music and culture, and bring fresh insights and energy into the team that we are delighted to nurture and grow!

DeccanAlt 2025: Kochi! ☀️

We have officially travelled for the second edition of the Deccan Alternative Music Conference and now have proof of concept for it being an annual, boutique, travelling conference!

Watch the aftermovie here!

Here are some highlights from this edition, which we wrapped up just about 2 weeks ago:

• We added 2 new conference session formats this year - fireside chats and case studies

• We featured 23 speakers leading 17 unique sessions across 2 days

• We welcomed 24 partners across verticals - more than double the amount we had last year

• Our talent buyer programme nearly tripled in size - last year we had 9, this year we had 24 talent buyers from 6 countries

We’re are also tracking our economic, social and environmental impact - and official numbers will be confirmed in our report which we aim to share with you in a month or so!

Neon on podcasts 🎙️

In case you’re wondering, we do cringe at hearing our own voices recorded and played back to us! Between December 2024 and January 2025, we recorded 2 podcasts, both of which you can listen to on the links below:

• Selector Behind the Music Podcast: Ever wondered about the comparison between India and UK's live sector? Mo sits down with Sybil Bell from Independent Venue Week and Vishruti and Prarthana from Bangalore's Neon Culture to discuss the live sector in both countries. This was released just ahead of Independent Venue Week in the UK, which was celebrating its 12th year running between 27th January - 2nd February 2025.

• Lex Talk Music: In this episode, we explore the remarkable journey of these two trailblazing women, the inception of Neon Culture, and their vision for DAMC. They share insights into their respective career trajectories, their dedication to community building and advocacy, and how they’re shaping Neon Culture to amplify independent voices.

It was so much fun recording both these episodes and any chance to nerd out is welcome with open arms at Neon. Both these opportunities gave us an outlet to freely share our observations, experiences and accumulated learnings over a decade working across various roles in the music industry, and we are proud and hopeful that it will spark some interest in working in this industry or shed some light on the challenges within it among listeners.

Before we get into more of the fun and chaos of conference planning in this month’s newsletter, we wanted to let you in on a special offer - a limited number of early bird tickets for the conference and showcase are available until tomorrow, 2nd November 2024!

Get yours here before they run out!

This edition of our annual flagship travelling event will essentially be the proof of concept for the “travelling” part as we set out to make this India’s first multilingual, boutique conference that discovers a new music scene every year. (No pressure 😅)

While we would be lying if we said we were not nervous, we are finding ourselves unexpectedly bringing in learnings from our experience organising this last year in our home city and are already feeling so supported and welcome by so many local music stakeholders in Kochi. We are actively posting updates on our Instagram page and website - follow along if you aren’t already!

The Venue

We visited this beautiful port city last week with our conference organising team in tow to complete an official recce for our beautiful venue which is *drumroll* 🥁🥁🥁

Kerala Museum!!!

Picture yourself sitting amidst all this greenery, talking about music to fellow music nerds, and enjoying a concert in the gorgeous amphitheatre under the stars. We cannot wait to spotlight the amazing grassroots work and artists in the Kochi Music scene and learn from the folks who have made this such an important cultural centre in the country.

Kochi Music City

Since we are taking the conference to Kochi, it only made sense to also bring Neon’s music city survey there as well! We are keen to collect insights from artists, fans and music business professionals who make up the local music ecosystem and share a snapshot of it with everyone at our conference and beyond. If you are connected with the Kochi music scene or know someone who is, we would love to hear from you as part of this survey.

Take the Kochi Music City Survey here!

DeccanAlt x PRS for music mixer

After our venue recce last week, we also hosted a small pre-conference mixer in partnership with PRS for music and got to meet with ~50 music stakeholders consisting of artists, curators and cultural tastemakers of the city. It was an evening filled with warmth, engaging conversations and building genuine connections with Kochi’s thriving music community.

The venue was the charming French Toast bakery in Kacheripady, and they provided the most excellent high tea spread consisting of sandwiches, egg puffs and french toast 🤤

We had a lot of help from our friends at HEARTLAND and Beyond Zeal who understand this music scene better than anyone else, and of course our event partner PRS for Music which does so much for so many music creators around the world (email us if you’d like to know more about them and their presentation at the mixer!). This event was a great precursor to how dynamic DeccanAlt 2025 is going to be, and we strongly urge everyone who hasn’t discovered the Kochi music ecosystem yet to join us in February for a unique experience!

The next few months will be packed with conference planning activity and our usual consulting projects at Neon. We do have some exciting new additions to our team which we will share in the coming weeks but that’s all for this month! If you would like to get involved with DeccanAlt 2025, drop us an email on info@neonculture.in - we’re always interested to hear from like-minded folks in music and culture!

Working within other organisations until this year, we have been around this feeling a few times but haven’t had to be in charge of making decisions and choices as “season” kicks in. However, being in the thick of it as cofounders is a whole different experience altogether!

We are finding ourselves wrapping up open conversations to secure contracts for consulting projects, planning in full swing for our conference coming up in 6 months and feeling the energy shift as our artists gear up for releases, tours or both. It’s like the last few days before school opens after summer vacation, when you’re in middle school or older - a little bit sad that sleeping in is over but mostly excited to see friends after a break!

Keeping this theme of upcoming change in mind, we wanted to highlight some cool experiences we have had this month, and share more on the new launches that will put us in a good stead for the next few months:

Neon turns 1 celebrations 🥳

We got to celebrate Neon turning 1 with our closest family and friends through a cozy in-person gathering at a little Thai spot in Bangalore, and it was all sorts of wholesome! We also sent out merch packs by post to everyone who has been part of our journey this year and were so touched with all the love on social media as folks received them! We just want to continue doing work that inspires us, and could not have asked for a better professional and personal network who understands, supports and believes in us the way you do.

We presented some of our research at All About Music 2024!

In case it wasn’t obvious till now, Neon loves data. And especially primary data which involves speaking to people on the ground and recording their insights. We also believe that India is too big and diverse of a music market to see things through one lens only - music ecosystems are so varied everywhere, and we need to have a local (sometimes even hyperlocal) approach to understand the needs and gaps in this multi-faceted country.

We got the opportunity to deliver a short and sweet presentation on our favourite topic, music research, at All About Music this year (shoutout to Chandni and Ashish for understanding our approach and making this possible). Knowing the scale and reach of this annual event, we were thrilled to get the chance to be total nerds and share some of this with the audience! We addressed a massive ballroom full of music folks about the importance of music research at a local level, in order to break down the macro trends generated by the larger annual reports that come out in the music industry.

We also shared some conclusions from our own local research - The Bangalore Music City Survey, which we launched in 2023 and run annually. We found ourselves thoroughly inspired by all the conversations we had around research after that. Turns out others like data as much as we do and we can’t wait to build on this survey for years to come!

Bangalore Music City survey 2024-25 is now LIVE 🚨

Speaking of the Bangalore Music City Survey, the next edition is now LIVE, and if you are a Bangalore-based artist, music business professional or music fan, we would love for you to participate in this survey.

GO TO SURVEY

When we started this research, we knew that over time we would be able to build up a repository of data that businesses, artists and other music stakeholders would be able to rely on for understanding Bangalore’s music ecosystem better, offering services tailored to it’s needs and coming together to advocate for better music policies in the city.

What we didn’t expect was to present the report from it’s first edition at two major global music conferences! These speaking opportunities and the support and feedback we received from our own community of music folks in Bangalore only strengthened our resolve to continue this survey annually and work towards our goal of seeing Bangalore become a music city.

DAMC 2025 is in the works!

We are so excited to share more on what the second edition of our flagship conference will hold, but for now here’s what we can tell you:

🗓️ Dates: 7th and 8th February, 2025 (Friday and Saturday)

📍Location: Kochi

🌞 Vibes: Immaculate 🏝️🥥

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Some other updates:

• Our website got a refresh, check it out here! We updated all our pages so you can find out more about our services, information on our work with artists and other music organisations, and also download our reports and stay upto date with our capacity building work!

• We are thrilled to have contributed to Bangla-Sylheti synthfolk project Dindun’s Vol 3, their third independent EP! While Prarthana featured on main vocals for track #2 Tungsten on this EP and Vishruti was on recording engineer duties for this, they both provided backing vocals for track #4 Aao gia as well. We absolutely love their music and would love for more people to discover their music. We encourage you to stream their EP and share it with your friends and network too.

• The Bangalore Indie playlist is still going strong, and we now update it once a month. For the uninitiated, this is a curation-free playlist to create a record of independent music releases in Bangalore. (Imagine showing someone 10 years later what music used to sound like in the 2020s in Bangalore, all in one place *chills, literal chills*) So if you are an independent artist or know an independent artist based in Bangalore who has new music out, share this submission form with them to send their track through and we will feature it.

• Our availability for consulting hours and monthly workshops are listed on our topmate page, also linked on our refreshed website and all social media pages as well. We will be announcing the next catalyst session(s) in the first week of September, so keep your eyes peeled for that 👀