MAN WITH A PLAN AKSH BAGHLA
The musician who just released his first single
“PAYING ATTENTION TO MY SOCIAL MEDIA MUSIC CONTENT WAS A CONSCIOUS CALL I MADE SO I CAN GET MY OWN AUDIENCE AND DON’T HAVE TO RELY ON CORPORATE LABELS WHEN I COME OUT WITH MY ORIGINALS” —AKSH BAGHLA, MUSICIAN
Aksh Baghla, 27, decided to showcase his musical talent by doing covers on social media so that when he begins to work on originals, he will already be popular enough to be able to bypass corporate music labels.
Aksh brought together the two things he loves the most—music and technology— and the career choice was a no-brainer. Even though his family in Palampur,
Himachal Pradesh, wanted him to join their business, as someone who had picked up the guitar and piano in high school in Chandigarh, was in a band, and grew up listening to cover artistes on YouTube while also keeping an eye on the great number of views these videos got, Aksh managed to convince his folks to give him one year to give singing a shot.
CONSCIOUS CALL
Soon, he was uploading videos of himself performing covers, but didn’t really manage to get a lot of views. So, he gave up the idea and joined his family business. When a video of his did go viral in 2017, with nine million views, it got a surprising number of hateful comments accusing him of lip syncing. To prove a point, he posted another video of himself wherein he mimicked 30 singers, which did the trick. “Paying attention to my social media music content was a conscious call I made in 2017. Why? So I can get my own audience and don’t have to rely on corporate labels when I come out with my originals. My musician friends aren’t happy with labels, even though more of them these days are more mindful of an artistes’ rights,” explains the Chandigarh resident who made his peace with his live performance being canned due to the pandemic by making decent revenue via online shows and brand endorsements.
Music content creation is a step towards ‘adapting to survive’ in today’s social mediaobsessed world. “But Reels will be an additional marketing force for songs. Reels music falls into the usergen erated content space an d aren’t artistic pieces. So, I don’t think we’ll only have 30 secon d-long songs,” says Aksh, explaining that the trend of creating music for short videos started as a marketing strategy by Jason Derulo, followed by Drake’s Ki Ki Do You Love Me challenge. “Now, every artiste is doing this to make songs discoverable. This is just the industry reacting and making content accordingly,” he shrugs.
Aksh smiles as he signs off. “To those who say I’m not really a musician, I’ll say: Check out my original composition, which released last week. On Instagram!” Because who needs labels when you’ve already built a 505K-strong audience waiting for your work to release, on a platform of your choice.