The first of the series of seminars and conferences organised by Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan elaborated on the role of Internet in the field of music

Sunday morning at Sun n Sand Hotel played host to a gathering of eminent musicians, instrument-makers and music lovers, at the seminar 'Sangeet Aapka Sangati Internet Ki' conducted by educational technology expert Parimala Inamdar. This was the first of a series of seminars, workshops and conferences that singer Shubha Mudgal and tabla player Aneesh Pradhan plan to organise over the next three years, in association with their record company, Underscore Records.

Inamdar enlightened the audience about the various options that the Internet has to offer, and explained its relevance to musicians and people in the music industry. "Ingenuity and curiosity are the main driving factors behind any Internet endeavours, and the best way to become Internet savvy is by trial and error," said Inamdar who also works as an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems at the NIIT institute. "Musicians and artistes have three main facets to their to their art. They are teaching, performing and marketing and promotion. Indian artistes are not very familiar with the Internet and its ability to reach people, or at the most use it for email and surfing. The need of the hour for the Indian music industry is to learn to use the tools presented by the Internet to suit their requirements," she added.

Shubha Mudgal, who herself is quite tech-savvy and actively uses social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, said " The biggest problem is that Indian classical music has very specific needs and requirements which are different from most other genres of music. Most software available on the Internet cannot be customised to suit these requirements. For example, a seven-minute song would cost the same as a forty five-minute ghazal on software such as Itunes. We need to appeal to developers to create applications to suit our music, but we cannot do that unless we establish a presence online, and use our strength of numbers to do so. Niche genres such as ours should be given the freedom to decide the terms and conditions under which our music will be distributed and marketed."

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