Interview: Flutin CEO Vishu Gupta Discusses the Music Discovery Platform and the Collaboration With Indian Pop Star Sukhbir Singh
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Flutin is a music discovery platform focused towards independent artists. Using AI, Flutin tracks music listening behaviour of the users and recommends the most relevant tracks from emerging and independent artists, thus helping them discover new music and providing better and relevant exposure to the artists. Flutin has over 9 million downloads, over 300K DAUs and streaming 3 million songs daily. Raised US $340K investment from GHV Accelerator and some HNI Angels. The company aims to be the Facebook for Music in the near future as a unique product, solutions and support.
DCWS connected with Flutin’s CEO, Vishu Gupta, for an exclusive interview to discuss several topics, including how the music discovery platform differentiates itself from services like Spotify, the creative collaboration with popular Indian bhangra artist Sukhbir Singh, why the platform is a game changer for independent artists and much more.
After reading our Q&A with Vishu Gupta, be sure to check out the Flutin website and download the app on your iPhone or Android device to discover your favorite new artist!
So, Flutin is essentially an app that utilizes user data, locations and behaviour in order to predict what new tracks might work in your existing playlists. What sets Flutin apart from services like Pandora and Spotify, and how did the idea for the app come to fruition?
While the other apps such as Pandora and Spotify focus on promoting artists that are already famous, Flutin tracks and studies a listener’s behaviour and presents to them a perfect mix of songs by both popular and non-popular artists. This way, the listener gets to explore music beyond just what is popular and emerging artists get exposure. Besides, Flutin is to be seen as a platform for emerging talent and music discovery rather than just another music streaming app. So, it can be said that it is the app’s approach and objective that separates it from these music streaming apps.
Can you tell us more about the importance of Flutin for independent musicians in a landscape that’s pretty much exclusively run by Bollywood?
The fact that it's free already seems like a game-changer. Without a doubt, Bollywood dominates the Indian music industry, which makes getting a break there an extremely challenging task. In addition to talent, one needs a lot of money, recognition, and contacts to reach there. Flutin, on the other hand, provides equal opportunities to all the artists to showcase their talent and garner the fame they can use to enter Bollywood. Once an artist becomes popular through Flutin, the path to enter Bollywood becomes much shorter and simpler.
Flutin recently announced a creative collaboration with popular Indian bhangra artist Sukhbir Singh who also happens to be an investor in the app. Why the decision to partner with such a famous artist for a brand that represents the underdogs of indie music, and what initially piqued Sukhbir’s interest?
Undoubtedly, Sukhbir Singh is quite popular, but before becoming an icon in the Indian music industry, he saw a fair share of struggles too. So, we don’t see any better inspiration for emerging artists than someone who walked down the path they are planning to walk and made it big in the industry. The objective of Flutin to provide a comprehensive platform for struggling musicians and the promising approach it follows to accomplish that is what piqued Sukhbir’s interest.
Sukhbir considers himself not just an investor, but a mentor to Flutin and its artist. Mentorship from a successful mainstream artist is so essential to those entering the music industry, but rare. In a sense, Flutin itself acts as a kind of guiding mentor. How do you think Flutin is encouraging a landscape of support and connection rather than a cut-throat competitiveness between musicians?
Unfortunately, it is true that the industry features a cut-throat competition among artists, which, we believe, defeats the very purpose of art. We are trying to do away with that by replacing the competitive atmosphere with an atmosphere where all artists get to introduce their unique vibes or flavours to the industry.
Flutin is trying to give equal opportunities to all the artists so that the ones who lack funds and fame do not get sidelined. Outside of the appeal for emerging artists and the indie community, how else can a platform like Flutin better engage listeners and musicians than other existing apps or subscription services?
Flutin gives you a chance to listen to the music you may not get to listen to anywhere else simply because it is not popular. Here, you may discover many new artists who are similar to the popular artists you already like.
And for musicians, there are much higher chances of becoming popular because their music is promoted among the most relevant audience. Furthermore, we are in the process of developing a few interesting features that will make Flutin all the more useful for both listeners and musicians.
What are future plans of expansion for Flutin, and do you expect this app to change the music industry, both in Bollywood and Hollywood?
Flutin is introducing a couple of projects that focus on discovering talent and giving them the exposure they deserve. One of these initiatives is Flutin First. Under this program, Flutin will be helping the undiscovered artists, who compose original music, in production as well as promotion of their songs. We are hopeful that through such initiatives, we will be able to introduce fresh talent to both Indian and international music industries. Apart from that, we are also working on a comprehensive tool that may prove to be quite helpful for artists across the globe.
Who are some of Flutin’s most successful emerging artists that have gained traction thanks to your app, and what are you and Sukhbir’s top pieces of advice for musicians to reach maximum success on Flutin?
Even though there is no shortcut to success, we believe that doing a bit of research of the trends before composing music can be really helpful to achieve success. There is a lot an artist can learn from their existing songs on the app through the analytics as well as from the work of other artists who create similar types of music. Some talented artists have gained huge popularity through their songs on Flutin App. A few among them are cited below:
Cure For Paranoia
Los Lonely Boys
Manishree Sarmah
The Dunwells
Lisa Morales
Fariz Barsatie
Prakhar Mishra
Kuhu Gracia
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