You might want to start a company of any type but unless there is a proper business model attached to it, the purpose is not solved. News now is that noted music director K M Radhakrishna has started a new music company called Akshita audio. He is not the first to do it and many more music directors are following the suit.
So why is this new trend picking up? Well, here is the answer. There was a time when producers used to sell their film’s audio to audio companies and the companies used to buy by paying some money. Times changed and audio companies began to buy only big movies. As for the small and medium budget flicks, they would distribute for free.
Eventually, even that became difficult and audio companies said they can’t release and producers used to give some money to ensure the audio is there in market. But today, both parties are not interested. This is because audio CD sales has taken a big plunge and just for acquiring that album, if songs are good they are saying they will give around 1 lakh.
And producers don’t have craze for that 1 lakh. So now, music directors are requesting to cut their remuneration by a small amount and give audio rights. Since they would be composing music for different projects they would keep the audio rights of multiple projects.
As per the current business model, when a song is played on a Radio FM channel, a payment goes from the channel to a body called IPRS. Out of that, half the payment goes to the audio label and out of the remaining half, half will go to music director and other half to lyricist. IPRS is a legal authority that distributes funds. So, if a music director sets up his own audio company he gets 75 percent of the total revenue. This is the reason why the new trend has begun. For the record, Radhakrishna is releasing ‘Lakshmi Raave Maa Intiki’ audio through his label.