MUSIC MAED EASY

ONE OF INDIA’S TOP MUSIC PODCASTS, MAE THOMAS’S MAED IN INDIA TAKES RADIO BACK TO ITS ROOTS

These days, conversations about books and music often devolve into debates over market shares. Happily, no cloud is without its silver lining—thanks to the surfeit of wellmarketed mediocrity on offer, genuine quality stands out all the more.

At first blush, Mae Thomas doesn’t come across as a podcast titan. “I had been in radio for most of my life,” she says. “I left after about a decade because I was a bit jaded. Then, in 2015, I was contacted to make a podcast.” Left un-trumpeted is that before launching Maed in India, she was creative head at Indus Vox (which produces Cyrus Broacha’s Cyrus Says). In 2018, she set up her own production house, which manages her show and a slew of others. For the market-minded, here’s a stat—in 2018, Apple ranked two shows—Maed and NoSugarCoat—produced by her firm in its ‘Best Podcasts’ list.

Thomas describes her show as “India’s first indie-music podcast”, saying, “I wanted to get artists to come in and do live sessions, to feature new music coming out of the country.” That’s a modest summary—aside from the weekly show, Maed also hosts live events, conducts music-biz seminars and puts out a ton of new content. Now at 240 episodes, the show’s guestlist runs the genre gamut, from Hard Kaur and Naezy to Indian Ocean, Euphoria and Apache Indian, aside from a bevy of new artists.

What makes Maed stand out, though, is the polish. “I’m not going to feature just anyone,” says Thomas. Those who do make the cut get a platform as well as technical support. “It’s really expensive to record music professionally,” she says. “If you listen to the show, you’ll notice the sound quality—the show is mixed and mastered before being released.” (Again, the un-trumpeted includes her own presentation—smooth, well-researched and palpably sincere.)

She’s quick to share credit: “We have a team of six or seven people. My partner, Shaun Fanthome, handles the legal, financial and production aspects,” she says. “We record at Island City Studios in Mumbai—they’re the guys behind Gully Boy—and we’re lucky to have a major audio-tech brand, Shure, supporting us.”

All said and done, this is a show about music and the people who make it; a show which, for instance, looks past the celebrity Hard Kaur and at the person Taran Dhillon. Sample this from the interview (Ep. #74): “No one’s really heard a heartbreak song from Hard Kaur. I wrote this after I came out of a [terrible] relationship—I had been seeing him for two and a half years. He said I was great as a girlfriend, but he couldn’t marry me because I was Hard Kaur.” ■