funnu's weblog » venture

The year I once knew as 2009…..

funnu — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:26:38 +0000

Part 3: The Venture

It was one of the normally dull evenings in the hostel blocks. I was deeply engrossed in an extremely boring google research for one of my marketing (m-AD-MAN*) projects. It was then that Jai pinged me, to discuss about his project for NID Bangalore. Little did I know, that this discussion would shape a significant amount of time in the coming year. Frustrated with uninspiring assignments, we turned to music, and “the MC Project” broke out of shell. For the next 3 months, Jai and I worked on the idea, as a part of our academic tenure. After which the term ended, and I found lesser time for working on it. So, as I narrowly scraped through my management diploma, I decided to dedicate some time for the MC Project in 2009.

MC actually stands for Music Collaboration, and the name was taken from my project title, which was “Music Collaboration through social networking”. Our basic idea is to create a platform for amateur musicians, where they can easily share their work with others, and even collaborate to finish their/others music piece. And as these musicians will come together, there will be communication, which might lead to learning from each other. So we have three basic concepts: Share, Collaborate and Learn. At this point in time, we have created the basic working model, which provides for the functioning of all these concepts; but it does requires some polishing.

As I finished all the traveling, I turned back to the MC Project. For the 3 days my body rested, my mind started to ideate. The main reason we started the MC Project was we were never able to find a place for us in the social hierarchy, with respect to the fact that we wanted to play music. We were not professionals, neither did we intend to become one. For us music was a means of joy, passing time and not money. As one would say, we are amateurs; and although there is a term that defines us, there isn’t a place that connects us.

I never intend to become a professional musician, I enjoy strumming my guitar now and then, and I intend to keep it that way. Being professional adds a pressure to churn out songs every now and then, as my livelihood will depend on it. Also, I don’t get the rights to my creation, the distribution company does. And if I see the track record, Phooti Kaudi has produced some 4 songs in last 4 years. Which is not at all a bright sign, but it sort of makes me understand why we are seeing so much of copying in the industry. Involving money in the process, changes the equation dramatically; specially when ones livelihood is in question. As for me, I want to make music, not money; I want to make friends, not fans. Money is a means and not the end. A means to joy, to happiness, to music again.

When I actually like a music piece, my subsequent reactions to it is, listen it again and tell everyone about it. I often make others listen to it, and share it, if some one is far. While I feel, I am adding to the fame of the artist, I am actually practicing piracy. Something which I have stopped doing, once I realized what I was doing. First of all, it is against the will of the artist and secondly his livelihood depends on it (well not the insanely famous one’s). But then I ask myself this question, what if the artist doesn’t mind me sharing the music piece. What if he/she (him/her)self wants to distribute it for free. An amateur musician may be, some one who thinks like we do. Or it may be an upcoming/struggling artist who just wants his/her work to be out there, to create a name. Or a seasoned professional may be, who just wants that one song to get out there which he made just for himself and no one else.

And based on all this philosophy we have started the MC Project (which we self proclaim as non profit). I understand, many may feel the idea to be impractical; and we may be the only people who might end up practicing it. But then it is a idea that we float, the acceptance of which is not the question here, it is something we believe in. Plus looking at the current scenario, famous music is today being pirated for free, some doing it intentionally and some unintentionally. Today internet is more efficient and powerful an distribution channel than any when it comes to digital media. And this power should be used in a manner, which should benefit the artist and not hurt him.

I was familiar with the concept that creative commons, were floating and I found it to be applicable here. I like the idea behind creative commons, and I certainly feel it is the way to be for our project. It has its own glitches and has had its share of problems, but then evolution needs time to give birth to perfection. The license which I personally like is the attribution non-commercial. It says that, any one can distribute the piece, if they do not earn anything out of it, until they give the author due credit. Plus, if any one is making money using the work, then they need to pay a fee to the author for it. So I can share my work, and people can share it, as I want; and if it finds a commercial application (for instance, in advertising) I get a slice of the pie.

For 2 months Jai and I worked on materializing our idea, and while we were on the verge of launching it in September, life hit me in a way, I never imagined….

* – m-AD-MAN is actually short for one of our marketing subjects, Advertising Management. While others Called it Ad-Man, I used to call it mAd-Man

My plans

funnu — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:09:27 +0000

Ever since I came into existence; my primary motive was to fulfill the needs of Rajiv Fonia (read ‘about funnu’ for more details). But in order to do that I had to do certain things. So I followed all the conventional paths; Engineering plus MBA. Presently I am running after my mba degree; hope I will catch her within the two years. One year has passed by and it has been a success. I have reached all the places I needed to.

But in this process there are certain things which I saw, experienced and liked. So the needs of Rajiv Fonia remained same but my needs increased as time passed. It has been directly proportionate to the amount of time I live. I do not know whether this relationship will remain as it is; but for as long as I have lived the needs are increasing. Although the goal of my existence was to fulfill the needs of Rajiv Fonia; seeing that it is easily accomplished my mind craved to do stuff which happened around me. And after realizing that the needs of Rajiv Fonia can be fulfilled in a time less than what is allocated to me; I tend to utilize that time to fulfill my own plans. Rajiv and I have come to terms on this topic; he utilizes this time by sleeping when I am not in a mood for doing anything, otherwise I use for the fulfilling the plans I have made.

Plan number one: Make a movie; this has been my dream since I started watching movies. Whenever I watched a movie I used to think that if a particular scene was filmed in some other way the scene would have been much better. Or if the end of the story was shown first and the beginning at the end then the movie would have been more gripping. But one needs so many people in order to make a movie. To start off with, we need people to act; and then there are the musicians and so many more people.

Till now in order to fulfill this plan I have taken up all the opportunities I had; I have made five videos, all five minute long. First one is called ‘finally final’; it was a music video which me and my friends made in our final year of engineering. Rather than writing more about it, I will just put the link up so that you can see it.

The original idea of the song belongs to Jai Shankar Beban(lyrics + guitar); and this song would not have been possible without Sharad(vocals), Pulkit(vocals + flute), Dodo(drums), Dhaneel(tabla). You can see my photo when the credits called director roll along with the photo.

After that I have made four videos during my first year at the mba, two out of which have been shared on you tube and I will put the links for that up as well. I have contributed in the editing of one of the videos (mile sur).

and

I would have loved to show you the other two as well; but they haven’t been uploaded on youtube.

Plan number 2: Write a novel; I don’t know why I had this idea in my mind. Because unlike the movies idea; which I got by getting inspired from watching a lot of movies; I haven’t read many novels. Infact I just read 2 novels completely. I think this is because I want to tell a story and making a movie is so time consuming and resource exhaustive that some day it came to my mind that I should start writing first.

So I have decided that year 2008 will be the reading year. I am presently reading ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. After which I am going to read ‘interpreter of maladies’. The dog one is a nice novel; you should read it.

Also Saurabh and I have decided that we will read a novel every week and write reviews so that we can improve our writing style. Although Nehte (Saurabh) has read loads of novels and stories; and his writing skills are way better than mine. So I will be learning alot from him.

Plan number 3: Work/Venture; This is a topic I am really confused about. Whether I should work or whether I should start some venture. The more I think the more I get confused, and the more the ideas that I get. I somewhat feel stupid not to think of simple ideas that others have thought I couldn’t which were a hit and more stupid when the ideas I thought were implemented and are very successful. I couldn’t implement them due to lack of resources.

I have come to the conclusion that I will start something that requires no resources at all and if it is a success then leverage over that to implement my other plans or think of some other resource less plan. And work simultaneously.

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I think these are all the plans I have. More on this later.