Other artists are going their own way too and new labels to promote indie music have come up. Like Dhruv and Ash who are co-owners of Blue Frog. Or Vishal-Shekhar who’ve launched their label.
ASHEEM: It’s because independent musicians have burned their fingers.
AMIT: Vishal Dadlani of Vishal-Shekhar, for instance, is part of rock band Pentagram and he knows how difficult it is for a band to get a record deal. Bollywood gets them through but Pentagram isn’t as popular as it deserves to be. This trend has emerged because music companies don’t believe in building brands out of bands. Most of these young guys are smart enough to understand that freedom is what they want the most. They don’t want to be enslaved by a company in a horrible, one-sided contract.
RAHUL: Musicians are frustrated with music companies who can’t think beyond Bollywood. Those who do sign on an artist by fluke, produce rubbish, thanks to poor quality control. Plus, they don’t pay. We are convinced that we don’t get full royalties. For our first cassette Indian Ocean, HMV gave us a royalty statement saying that we’ll be paid Rs 16,300. Later on, their chairman approached us for another record and said that we had sold more than 40,000 copies. I mean, was he paying us 25 paise per cassette or was he just lying. Then, for Jhini, we signed up with a company for a licensing deal. They gave us advanced royalties once and after that, they disappeared.
AMIT: But there have been good things too. For instance, we thank Times Music for releasing Kandisa because we had no means of doing it then. But we do not thank them for not making a video or pushing it outside India.
SUSMIT SEN: Today, their CEO wants to re-release Kandisa with a new video. Talks are already on and they want us to do another album. 

... contd.