Audiomack exec on launching 'Audiomack Punjabi,' a new music vertical aimed at amplifying the regional genre
- Himanshu "Heems" Suri spoke to Insider about his work on launching a Punjabi music vertical at Audiomack.
Earlier this month, the music streaming platform Audiomack launched "Audiomack Punjabi," a new vertical aimed at amplifying the regional language genre that originated in India and Pakistan.
In a phone interview last week, Insider spoke to Himanshu "Heems" Suri, who's leading the vertical and in part overseeing the platform's broader South Asian expansion.
An artist of Punjabi-Indian descent, Suri gained notoriety as one-third of the hip-hop group Das Racist and has gone on to release music as a solo act and with the group Swet Shop Boys. Following a corporate stint at Spotify, he joined Audiomack in 2021 and is now the company's director of marketing and music strategy for the UK, Europe, Canada, and Asia.
In the interview, Suri framed the vertical's launch as a continued effort on his part to "shine a light on Indian culture as a whole" within the corporate structures of digital streaming platforms (DSPs), and discussed the potential for Punjabi music to mirror the international emergence of genres like Afrobeats and Dancehall.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You came onto Audiomack around this time last year. What made that the move for you personally and professionally at the time?
Yeah. I mean, it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. I had moved into the space of working at DSPs, trying to shine a light on Indian culture as a whole, and something both professionally and personally that drives me is the idea that Punjabi music deserves a place alongside hip-hop, Afrobeats, Dancehall, Latin, and some of the more popular genres of the world right now. And Audiomack already having that belief in those other genres, already kind of connecting diaspora dots, whether between Africa and the UK, or now in this sense, with what we're doing, India and the US, UK, and Canada — so seeing that they were already doing that. And then thirdly, seeing that folks were already engaging with Audiomack to listen to solely Punjabi music, versus other Indian genres. Those three things, I think. Actually, a fourth being: seeing how artist-forward they are, and what they kind of do to nurture artists early on in their career, having been an artist myself. So as you could see, there were a lot of reasons why it made sense to work together.
You said in a recent blog post you've seen "how global DSPs often focus on Bollywood while regional language genres fall to the wayside." Could you expand on that as an animating factor in this for you?
Sure. I mean, I think there's two things. For one, I believe in the power of regional languages, and I think with DSPs, we've seen a rise in how much people engage with regional language music, if they're provided more access to it. I've been at a larger DSP and I've worked on go-to-market content strategy for launching in local Indian markets. And, you know, I've seen and been a fan of Bollywood myself, but the industry up until this point has been very much driven by Bollywood North Indian film music. And so I think looking at the things, one, the rise of Punjabi and regional languages as a whole, and then two, specifically that folks that use Audiomack were listening from Punjab, were listening from Chandigarh, were listening and uploading from Punjab, from Chandigarh, from Ludhiana, and also from Delhi, where there's a large Punjabi culture. So those two things combined.
What has your experience as an independent artist and label founder shown you about the process of breaking acts in the US in particular?
As an artist, being American, it's easy to forget the kind of privilege you have of being a part of the largest music market. But being in a band with British artists, in Swet Shop Boys with two British artists, I've seen how important it is for artists outside the US to break in the US, how much they wanna do it and how much it means to their success. And I've seen that in the Punjabi community as well. And I've seen it in, not just that, the access to Punjabi listeners in the US and the UK and Canada and Australia, but also, for Western listeners and other markets that we've seen artists like Burna Boy and Bad Bunny break into. So it's extremely important for them.
What do you think the emergence and the prominence of Afrobeats could foretell of the potential emergence or greater emergence of Punjabi music? How do you see that in this role in particular?
Yeah. You know, actually, my career started asking this question, with what we referred to, or what some of us called, the "Despacito" moment. And previous waves of music from other cultures, and what we've seen with reggae and Latin in the past. But you know, it started for me asking, what can we do to have those moments in Indian culture, to move beyond the Punjabi MC and Jay-Z moment. And so, from what we saw after "Despacito" with Latin, and at the same time I was working to sow those seeds for Punjabi, it was happening alongside me for Afrobeats and for Arab music as well. So I've always kind of viewed these genres as related in some ways.
And I think I want to always emulate the success of those other genres, whether it's Latin or Afrobeats. And, you know, what I think has happened at Audiomack is they've seen organic audiences and growth in Africa. They listen to their users, both the creators and the listeners, and then they were able to build upon that. And I think what I'm trying to do here is very similar in that we listened to our users, you know, we saw where they are in India, we saw what they're listening to, what they're uploading, and we're trying to build on that organic growth. Already, we've seen a very significant growth in Canada of the Punjabi music genre on Audiomack, upwards of 500% over a year span.
How do you personally discover music? What tools or resources, outside of, let's say, DSPs, do you go to?
That's a good question. For me, a lot of it is playlists, and a lot of it is, again, Audiomack offering the genres that I'm interested in on one central spot. So for me, it is often that Global Trending playlist, especially 'cause those are artists often at the earlier stages of their career. But outside of Global Trending and what I see at Audiomack, honestly, the radio and on TV, Punjabi TV channels. And then, yeah, social media. I mean, just pretty much the places other people find music. But I would say working at DSPs, a lot of my music discovery is just roaming through the backends of computer systems and finding different things from different countries.
I've seen the playlists that have kind of initiated this, and that there are more plans for discovery, but could you speak to what this vertical will look like moving forward in your mind?
Sure. You know, I think the playlists are obviously a great place to start, and what we're doing there is a blend of playlists that incorporate traditional Indian instruments, playlists that are more hip-hop oriented, playlists that are more romantic or Senti, sentimental in nature, playlists representing women artists, and then playlists representing duets, which I'm really happy about. We've seen in Bollywood that the women singers' share of voice has decreased over time, and also duets, which used to be a cornerstone of Bollywood, have also decreased over time, in addition to Bollywood listening decreasing more recently as well. In Punjabi music, duets remain strong, and so we're happy to highlight that as well.
And then from there, what we're really proud of, again, is about placing Punjabi songs alongside others on Global Trending. And Audiomack World is something that I think is really amazing about Audiomack, and going back to the days where I was discovering music on blogs, to have something in-app where I can read a thousand words on an artist and then press a button and be listening to their music, and to have that kind of context of the artist that background is important. So to have more coverage of Punjabi artists on Audiomack World, this past week, we honored Sidhu Moose Wala, who passed away, was murdered, with a tribute to his work, his impact on not just Punjabi music, but global music, with a piece on Audiomack World. And so we're hoping to do more of that.
Beyond that, we've launched IG and Twitter channels. I think Audiomack does a great job of building community on their socials, and so we hope to do that as well on our social channels. And then, you know, the main thing, again, is being there for those artists, listening to them, seeing what they come up with with us. At Audiomack, some of the more recent kind of things we worked on that I'm proud to share with the Punjabi artist community specifically, is giving them access to Audiomack monetization program, uploading songs for free and being paid for it. Getting them access to Supporters, having them be able to reach out to their fans, have their fans buy tokens of support directly, and have the artist able to connect with the audience through private messaging, giving them access to things like concert tickets, meet-and-greets, and early access to music.
Thirdly, the Creator App. Having a place where artists can easily access their data, see how they're doing, where they're doing well, what playlists they're on. And then in addition, fourthly, I'd say the Artist Guide, which we recently launched, where artists can go, and beyond the glossary of terms, having a bunch of industry experts provide them with knowledge on things from publishing and legal and press and just where to start your career. So, you know, Audiomack is invested in being there with an artist from the beginning of their journey. Punjabi music is a huge genre, but globally, I feel that we're still at the beginning of this journey. And so part of it is just integrating that audience into these existing resources. And then part of it is just using those resources to build on what we've done with hip-hop and with Afrobeats, and apply the same resources and passion to Punjabi music.