Let’s just admit it – in the last two years, a lot of us got bored. Most of us had moved closer to home, thanks to WFH and hybrid work structure. This intimacy gave us a chance to reconnect with the forgotten, to find our grounding. The interaction between the two circumstances led to an increased demand for content from OTT platforms, but not your generic, every day dramas. As we got closer to our roots, the desire to explore our background grew intense. This inclination commenced in a hike in regional content, especially music. This increased demand for regional music has been duly noted in India and Mexico – countries whose traditional music is known for brilliance.
Shahir Muneer, Founder and Director Of Diva, a South-Indian music company has stated that regional music has been an integral part of India. “With vernacular social media apps, vernacular music was just yet another piece of the next 1 billion Internet users’ story of India. Music has grown not just via pure play audio/music apps, but also with video, be it YouTube, or short video apps, or social media apps having music features in them,” he added.
This stands true. With a variety of options, music suggestions and available playlists, it has only gotten easier to find content in one’s own tongue.
Gaana Originals, India’s platform for artists to showcase their non-film music has been promoting regional music in the country. This is apparent in the statistics – regional music is streamed over a 100 million times a month! Similar love has been shown to streaming services like Saavn and Jio Music – some of the other preferred music streaming platforms in the country.
Regional music in India, a country rooted in tradition, is also getting a remix. To make the content of folk creators more palatable for the modern day audience, these pieces are being remade and remixed to include a side of pop music. In December 2019, Gaana.com recorded more than a billion music streams of regional music!
But has the outburst really pushed us to go back to our roots? With social and cultural awareness, we are naturally more inclined to discover where we come from, instead of trying to escape it. As the youth of today faces a clash of culture – one leg in the first world, thanks to globalization, the other firmly in the ground – he is compelled to find his own identity and leave behind the one granted to him by the globalized world. And what better way to discover a culture than to immerse oneself in its art and music?
Punit Pandey, Chief Business Officer & Group Business Head of 9X Media, the largest Indian music broadcaster, makes this point clear. He has stated that it has been a decade that regional music has existed in the nation and hence, the growth is not unique to the pandemic. “Regional music has been growing irrespective and will continue to grow. Taking stock of the growth rate, what is happening in the marketplace, music used to grow at a pace of 10-12 per cent and the pandemic has aided this growth,” he states.
Regional content has indeed been present for years on platforms like YouTube, Spotify and more. New additions, updates and playlists keep rolling out ever so often. Take Mexican music genres, for example. Mexico is the largest Spanish speaking country in the world today. These are thousands of immigrants – from France, Chima, the Middle East, and more. Couple this with the sixty something indigenous groups, and you have the perfect amalgamation of culture. Mexican music genres reflect this perfectly. Thanks to music streaming companies like Deezer, Apple Music and Spotify, whatever a person wants is readily available, right with a tap. There are numerous playlists on these services that cater to a vast variety of Mexican music genres. Some of these include Spotify’s Sad Sierreño, Corridos 2020, and La Troca to Apple Music’s La Clica and Deezer’s Track
To make sure the audience stays attached and grows, new content keeps getting added; suggestions and regular recommendations allow listeners to discover it. When a song strikes a cord, it inevitably becomes the ‘most played’. The increased supply of regional music content results in an increased demand for mors. Six of Deezer’s 27 Browse Menu Music Genre hubs point to Latin American genres, with Mexico-specific playlists such as Corridos Tumbados (23K fans), Norteño Hits (38K fans), and Corridos Power (74K fans).
That the artists have a chance to upload their own music albums has only made things better – the increased chance of discoverability has prompted musicians to continue creating new regional content – OTT platforms are always present to make sure the process is smooth, the audience always there to appreciate.
If you’re loving what these OTT platforms are offering, these are the best services you should subscribe to for music streaming.
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