Therefore, India is the next major music export country

For a long time, it has been the West that has dominated the international music market. But during the decade, the rest of the world entered the global music scene for real. Instead of the East imitating the West, it was instead North America and Europe that was inspired by artists from Asia and South America.

In 2012, the song Gangnam Style with Psy quickly became the most viewed clip on Youtube and held first place for a full five years. This opened the door on the gavel for the South Korean K-pop and in 2018 it was neither the Jonas Brothers nor One Direction that was the world's largest boy band, but the South Korean group BTS whose album was at the top of the American billboard list.

The biggest summer plague of the decade came in 2017 when Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee blasted all the ramparts with their hit Despacito. The world saw a Latin wave bigger than ever that even made Beyoncé want to sing in Spanish.

Now the record companies are looking around for the next big music export, and everything is pointing out that it is India that will come big. Music production in India is growing more than twice as much as in the rest of the world, and the global record label Ifpi predicts that the Indian music market will soon be in the top ten globally.

One of the reasons why India is projected into a burgeoning music future is that its population is both large (over 1.3 billion) and young. In addition, more and more people in the growing middle class are now getting fast access to their smart phones.

Amit Gurbaxani is a freelance journalist and monitors everything from new artists and record labels to trends in the industry. He writes for Indian publications such as Musically, Billboard and India Today.

- India is the next big music market, he says, and says that many new music and streaming services are now fighting for the entire 900 million Indians who are under 35. Swedish Spotify has recently entered the race, but so far is far behind the country's largest service, Gaana, with over 100 million monthly active users.

Now that you no longer need a record label to release music, Gurbaxani is seeing more and more new artists popping up and he is noticing how music production is increasing, especially in the hip hop genre.

Some to keep an eye out for is now Indian rapper Divine, whose life recently became a movie in Gully Life: The Story of Divine, produced by American hip hop artist NAS. A movie that many people describe as a Bollywood version of 8 Mile, the movie about Eminem from 2002. Divine has put Mumbai on the map as a hip hop city and it was the song Mere gully mein that became his big breakthrough. A kind of protest song about financial inequality in his hometown.

- Bollywood music has long dominated the top charts in India but I notice that it is about to change, says Amit Gurbaxani.

Roochay Shukla at music company Outdustry India believes in electronic dance act Ritwiz, influenced by EDM, trap and dubstep. His song Udd Gaye, which is a mix of traditional Indian music and electronic music became a big hit in India in 2018.

Another artist that Amit Gurbaxani thinks could hit the international stage is Prateek Kuhad, a singer / songwriter in the pop-rock genre. He writes song lyrics in both Hindi and English, has already played at the industry-important American festival SXSW and toured the US where he sold out his New York gigs. His song Cold / mess ended up on Barack Obama's annual best list in 2019.

- Prateek Kuhad could make an impact internationally, but it has to do with luck and circumstances, says Amit Gurbaxani.

Because even though music from India has all the prerequisites to become the next big thing after the K-pop and Latin wave, Gurbaxani has his doubts.

- Hindi is a huge language, but it is only spoken in India. After all, Spanish is spoken in many places in the world.

According to Amit Gurbaxani, India is more diversified and more of a continent than a country with its 29 states, many different languages ​​and cultures.

- The sound is so different in different Indian regions, not like the reggaeton found all over Latin America. At the same time, it may be enough for a single artist to get a hit that strikes internationally in order to create a domino effect.