When the cassettes were replaced by audio compact disks, musicians and the entire line of music creators were ecstatic at the prospect of producing a surplus of independent music. But, soon with the advent of the internet the floodgates of content opened to a phenomenon of manufacturing snowballing sensations.

Talented recordists, arrangers and music studios churned out quality music covers ever since platforms like Sound Cloud and YouTube has facilitated easy peer to peer content sharing. This primarily meant that singers had a justifiable share in terms of the market and in terms of reaching the end user on a higher commercial viability. These new musicians soon got trending with their experimentations, permutations and tryst with the un orthodox that was so long lost from the main stream. With in video branding and collaborations with conglomerates or big time sponsors, the newbies of generation Y garnered almost equal attention as the big players of the music world.

Here are a list of some rock stars that are every netizen’s heart throb now-

Vidya Vox, the YouTube channel has thousands of subscribers just by the owe of a beautiful carnatic singer who sings Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu, French, Hindi and English all with a smart ass élan. The diasporic courtship of a western jazz fringed number along with a Bollywood Balaam Pichkari is one of its kind, and that is exactly the reason why Vidya owns a mammoth figure of over 300,000 subscribers. her glossy videos and poppy performances will make even a non audiophile groove to her fusion beats.

Sanah Moidutty is another nightingale whose voice has been explored by the musical duos- Vishal Shekhar. She has sand jingles and rendered playbacks with ease before singing covers online. Her impeccable Shreya Ghoshal like tonality keepd her on the top of her business when it comes to using it for commercial sphere and her ever growing fan base and subscribers is witness to that.

Aswin Ram is a rockstar rooted in the Malayali culture, his chocolaty rendition of any bollywood number like Channa Mereya or a notorious Malayalam mashup ripping apart a host of western numbers is proof of his musical ingenuity. One of the finest quality of this young chap is that he improvises every single song that he chooses to sing and that adds a dollop for the internet to crash and burn!

Shraddha Sharma is a heart throb and every wannabees dream come true, her modest looking music videos boast and stand tall only by means of raw singing talent. There is almost little to zero post production, the vocals and the music don’t seem to be married in the studio and it is largely a story of how a young girl chooses to chase her dreams and achieves 230,000 subscribers with a guitar strumming close to her heart. She is one of the few who has not refrained from posting well recorded covers to amateurish looking musical videos, but has surprisingly been successful in both with equal might.

Shirley Setia brings a lot of range and expression through her lyrics. Her style does not reek of the western pop stars but rather heralds a new generation of independent singers trying to make a mark with something uncommon, both in textures and tunes. Not only does she have a plethora of well shot videos in her channel but also a list of collaborations to vouch for her popularity. Raftaar, the Indian rap God has posted a promotional music video that features Setia’s voice amongst others. Avish Sharma is again an young packet full of surprises, be it his presentations or improvisations with the classics of Rahman or the merry go lucky Bollywood numbers. Avish has the sparks of a potential playback singer sometimes clouded by the overdose of expressions and note changes, interestingly he sounds close to Sonu Nigam even on songs which are not sung by Nigam.

Sanam and Sanam Puri is one of the successful YouTubers in this list, their unbelievable dedication to their songs punctuate every emotion and balance delicate cuts and jabs of a long lost love story. It is almost as if they serve old wine in new bottles with their re incarnation of numbers like lag jaa gale and others. Sanam’s band actually flaunts a 2.4 million subscribers and it is all the more popular like the Pakistani band Jal used to be once in college fests.

Darshit Nayak, from Ahmedabad is almost a look alike of Atif Aslam but he brings a very different flavour in the urbanized singing style of modern cover singers, his key changes are also unlike the traditional cover artists in a mashup, he degenerates and recuperates to different levels of a note till he settles for tweaking an emotion before washing off any slug that would not allow the element of surprise to seep in.

Avanie Joshi is a model and singer who had had a fair share of TV and has rightly translated all that attention to her YouTube channel posing as a glamorous diva who sings her heart out on a windy evening.

Amika Shail can get husky and sweetly melodious like Tulsi kumar and her covers are just dripping of her creative juices. Though the exact karaoke sounding beats of the original track, sometimes fail to break the monotony of the lyre she carries.

This article was featured in the September 2017 issue: http://bit.ly/2wcF7qd