Armaan Malik And His 300+ Songs Malik commenced the chat by sharing his journey, he said, " I was eight when I started singing professionally." "I participated in the reality show called, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa: Little Champion, and that was one of the first editions of that reality show.

At the age of 18, the singer Armaan Malik, made his debut in the music industry with the song Tumko To Aana Hi Tha from the Salman Khan film Jai Ho. Since then, he has performed a plethora of well-known songs, such as Buddhu Sa Mann (Kapoor & Sons), Besabriyaan (MS Dhoni: The Untold Story), Naina (Khoobsurat), and many more. In addition, he has provided the voice of several songs from the Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada cinema industries.

Recently we had the pleasure to engage in conversation with the artist along with Aayushman Sinha, Founder and CEO of Represent a talent management company at our annual Tech and Innovation Summit held in Bangalore, India. In light of the esteemed conversation and dialogue revolving around technology, it was important to understand the impact, evolution and future it had in the entertainment industry.

Malik commenced the chat by sharing his journey, he said, " I was eight when I started singing professionally." "I participated in the reality show called, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa: Little Champion, and that was one of the first editions of that reality show. So I had to remember all my lyrics. Which later became a lyric stand with sheets of papers, and then it was an iPad and then a teleprompter," he continued. Chuckling he added, "So tech helped me in many ways to remember my lyrics. But jokes aside, I think we've seen a huge change in the landscape of music. At first, it used to be organic instruments, there were orchestras, there used to be live bands, and now DAWs, which is a digital audio workstation like logic pro tools." Sinha shared, "It has simplified the process. It has aided us very efficiently. Just don't want it to completely replace the human element."

However, there are several misconceptions about the technology available to artists today. Malik shared that the term attune is used loosely, he explained "They think that autotune can basically make a non-singer sing, but that's not true. It's basically a pitch correction tool. So suppose you're singing, and you sing a song on 40 and it should be somewhere close to 100, it helps you go to that hundred. So good singers sync around 80 to 90, and then they shift to 100 after training."

Sinha added with his observation of growth in the industry, "India is at this very unique stage in music in particular and in pop culture in general. So we're the number three market in the world on Spotify. We have the most number of users on Spotify. We're number one on Instagram, we're number one on YouTube. We have the fourth-highest number of songs released every single day out of any other country in the world. We've set up touring where you've seen massive festivals like Lollapalooza entering India now. You're seeing Ed Sheeran perform in India to 50,000 people next week, which is the most number of tickets sold for any concert ever in India. So pop culture has reached that level of adoption now, and consumers are spending towards it."

As for where India stands on a global scale Malik shared, "I feel like India is really out there. India has never gotten a chance to prove itself. It's not gotten a chance to show its talent. Ayushman and I have always had this vision of taking India to the world. Ever since we started working together when I was 18, and even though Bollywood was the main stage in India, and we were like, okay, if we have to become a big name, we have to do Bollywood music. But my end goal was always to do pop music on a global platform."

Talking about the impact of social media and how it has changed the way for artists to be discovered, Malik said, "A lot more people are discovering new artists that they are really liking, and I feel like new artists are flooding the market and it's a great thing for the industry because it's anyone's game right now, to be honest. It's so competitive." He added, "There can be a kid, probably from Ranchi, who puts up a video and goes viral and tomorrow he's a superstar. So the industry has changed quite a bit. The landscape has changed." Coming to his own path and journey, he shared, " I, however, did a lot of groundwork to get to where I am today. I sang 300 songs in feature films and did 100 jingles, but that is not necessary in today's scenario. I don't think it's necessary to go through that whole process. While I do respect that grind, I feel like it's made me the artist that I am today. But kids today are probably singing one, or two songs and they're popping onto the scene."

He concluded by elaborating on his vision, " What I'm striving to do, is to probably build this whole pathway for IPOP, Indian pop and take it to a global stage. Having done a lot of global collaborations, one being with the famous pop star Ed Sheeran, I did a song with him called Two Step. Things like these have catapulted me to a different level. And I want to be there because I really want to inspire a lot of Indian artists to follow suit."