Anuv Jain has been making songs the same way since he was 16. Sitting in his living room or bedroom, with his guitar, simply singing and “trying to create something very profound and very beautiful.” The euphoria of a perfect line overrides the nerves and self-doubt that so often plague any artist’s creative process.
Eight years after his breakout single “Baarishein,” Jain still doesn’t know how to navigate industry networking. “Once again, if you guys know how it works, please tell me, because I can’t make friends to save my life, man,” he confesses.
Jain’s first gig was at a Chandigarh yoga studio for a fee of Rs. 10,000. At the time, Jain felt he had “scammed” the venue for too much money for a one hour performance. “I don’t feel the same way at all now, so if any promoters are looking at this, please don’t take this,” he cautions. As his producer told him that the payment that the venue was willing to make meant that he was worth that much, something changed inside of Jain: “I realised that, yes, I am worth something because they made more money from that show.”
Another counsel for emerging artists Jain has is to make sure you get the right percentage of royalties before signing a deal. “It sounds amazing to you in this moment, and it feels very life-changing. But in the next six or seven months, when more music comes out, this is going to seem very small to you. Right now, this percentage is not hurting you, but eventually – once the music grows a lot more –
this small percentage will start hurting you,” he adds, urging younger artists to think about the future.
Jain also doesn’t think that your core product as a musician should change based on algorithms: “I think, just make a good song.” Early in his career he did many live streams. “I used to go live at like 2 a.m. in the morning and just sing for like 50-odd people, and now we have 15,000 people on those live streams sometimes. I’ve just built the entire audience, the fan base, person to person, word of mouth to word of mouth,” he says, expressing how happy he is to have built a huge community today.
