Netflix announces exclusive Music vertical in Mumbai
American streaming giant- Netflix announced the launch of a Music Creative and Production team in Mumbai, the first of its kind in the APAC region
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What’s up, everyone?
Yesterday, Netflix announced the launch of its first music creative and production team in the Asia Pacific region, to be based out of Mumbai 🇮🇳
What will this team really do?
Providing production support to the music creators working with Netflix in India, the unit’s job is to connect them with local music talent, besides partnering with composers, producers, record labels, publishers, and artist management teams to make music for series and films backed by Netflix.
Basically, the whole 9 yards.
Netflix had announced earlier this month, that it would set up its first live-action post-production facility in Mumbai 🎬
With 40 offline editing rooms for directors, editors, and sound designers to be able to work on the original content it churns out every year, the facility is expected to go live in 2022.
The music production team will be led by Ramprasad Sundar who has been with Netflix for the past two-and-a-half years as part of its post-production activities.
In a blog on its website, he wrote:
“The music creative and production team will also partner with organizations across the country on programs and a range of initiatives, including workshops for training music supervisors and music editors.
With the aim of developing the next generation of music supervisors and specialists, the team will work towards building a more inclusive talent pipeline of individuals from underrepresented groups,"
However, when it comes to India, how successful has Netflix been?
Having launched back in 2016, it completed 5 years in the Indian market this January, and according to their Q2 results this year, they finally crossed the 5 million paid subscribers mark in India ✅
When it comes to the Indian market, Netflix commands a leading position amongst the Top 3 OTT platforms, going toe-to-toe with Disney + Hotstar and Amazon Prime.
However, Netflix has had to shell out the big bucks to get to this stage in India.
Over the past 2 years, it has invested well over Rs.3,000 Crores (roughly half a billion dollars) in the Indian market, producing more than 50 TV shows and feature films respectively, many of those turning out to be Pop Culture classics, such as Sacred Games.
Despite that, India still remains a fairly big bet for Netflix.
On an earnings call earlier this year, Co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings said:
“India, we're still figuring things out.
And so that investment takes some guts and belief forward-looking. But the other investments you should think of, just like rich European countries, content exports really well, and we're just getting a little better every month on it,”
Earlier this year, Netflix had announced more than 40 Indian originals for 2021, saying that it was looking to expand its slate by nearly three times as compared to 2020 across languages and genres, without disclosing investment figures.
With a world-class post-production facility now being built in Mumbai, and an action plan of moving into the associated creative aspects around films, such as music, Netflix is yet again pulling out the big guns in an effort to capture value.
As long as they keep churning out binge-worthy shows, we’re all game, right? 🍿
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