The Story Goes Like This!

Over the past few years, there has been a lull in live performances on an underground, indie level across the country as compared to what the situation was 5-7 years back. With the loss of many loved venues and even lesser crowds coming out, the live gigging scene was becoming quite stale. Enter Sofar Sounds. If you don’t know what Sofar Sounds is, it is a global initiative of Secret gigs that take place all over the world. The Founders came with the idea when they were attending a pub gig in London, United Kingdom. They were tired of the fact that they couldn’t listen to the music because of all the chatter and sounds besides the music. So they decided, they’d call a few artists, send special invites to their close friends and have a gig in their house. And the idea spread from there. Currently, in 370 cities around the world, Sofar Sounds has made a completely different niche for themselves. Now in various cities across the country, let’s look at how Sofar Sounds has made an impact on the independent music scene in our country. For reference, let’s take the example of Sofar Sounds in the capital region, Delhi NCR.

Sofar Sounds Delhi

Sofar Sounds arrived in New Delhi in September 2016, headed by Tanya Nath and Srishti Das, both Berklee Graduates looking to do something beyond the scope of their education. They were later joined by Raghav Srivastava and Sarang Sahay to form the core team. From September 2016, Sofar Delhi NCR has had 11 shows all over Delhi NCR, featuring not only artists from Delhi but also artists traveling all the way from Denver, Colorado. Considering Delhi was one of the later cities to get added to the Sofar initiative, their social media reach and expansion has been the fastest. This can be owed only to the fact that the Sofar Sounds Delhi NCR team including its core members and beyond, is filled with people who have been an integral part of the independent music scene in New Delhi for years.

“With Sofar Delhi NCR’s 12^th show around the corner, it’s been a heartwarming experience to be a part of such a strong and unique global community and to work with such supportive artists, hosts, guests and volunteers month after month. We all have out in a lot of effort and time to keep the magic of Sofar Sounds alive in the city.  Over the months, we have only seen Sofar grow in the Indian capital. We have amazing crowds and it’s great to see young people coming out to find new music. We also want to encourage older people to come to our shows, who would particularly be interested in attending the gigs in the city otherwise. When people come for out shows, we want to create a space for them to take them away from the day to day distractions in the city, through the music,” said Tanya Nath, City Leader of Delhi NCR for Sofar Sounds.

Picture Courtesy: Aryaman Dixit

So How does all of it work?

With the example of Delhi in mind, let's look at how the Sofar model works. This is how it works all around the country and the globe. The concept behind Sofar is completely voluntary. This means that the venue is given by anyone who would like to host a Sofar show. These are usually in living rooms, working spaces of offices and sometimes even small bedrooms or attics. As an artist, you apply to perform at one of these shows and get selected by a panel that approves your music. As a viewer, you apply to attend a show for a given month. At the end of the month, you get an invite to which entry is based on the first-cum-first serve. To top it all off, the exact location of the show is released 2-3 days prior to the event date, and the artists aren’t revealed until 2-3 hours before the show. Thus, it is all for the music, of the music and by the music. Everyone involves themselves because they are true lovers of music.

The Business Model

Well, I’m sure you’re asking yourself if everything is voluntary, how does it work logistically, financially? The main way in which Sofar Sounds gets any kind of money is through donations. The crowd attending gigs is asked to kindly give what they think their experience was worth. This pool of money is then used in various degrees to put on the next show, and so on forth. The artists are given two options: either they get a globally decided sum of 60 dollars, or they are given a video that is shot by the Sofar team and uploaded on the official Sofar Sounds channel which has a whopping 350,000 plus subscribers. The artists generally take the later. Look at the City of The Sun. Their cover of ‘Intro’ by The XX at a Sofar Sounds NYC show in 2015 has above 2 million views! 

If the concept behind the movement is to bring out artists into the eyes of the public, it’s certainly working. And not just for the artists, at Sofar Delhi NCR, team members are getting opportunities beyond Sofar for various kinds of paid freelance opportunities.

Changing the Independent Music Landscape in India

Sofar has been championing incredible indie acts for more than a year now. With a large chunk of cities, namely Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Dimapur, Goa, Hyderabad, Imphal, Kochi, Calcutta, and Pune hosting shows every month, it is slowly bringing the idea of the intimate gig to a wide range of audience around the country. Every show is talked about endlessly after it’s done. Each show has a wait list of around 400-500 people wanting to get in. Beyond that, Sofar Sounds have subsequently given birth to new organizations and groups that are doing their own intimate and secret gigs around the country too. At a stage where getting to see indie acts in the country was becoming tough due to the lack of venues and resources and other various reasons, Sofar Sounds has been able to pool in a community of wonderful people who are providing stellar shows every month to people around the country who really want to spend an evening out for music, not to just chat and drink whilst a band is playing in the background. 

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