Mumbai: In a world where music elevates every visual experience, the quest for the right soundtrack is crucial yet challenging. Finding music that not only resonates with your project but also adheres to copyright laws can be a complex task for creators and businesses alike. As digital content grows exponentially, the need for accessible, high-quality, and copyright-safe music is more pressing than ever.

This is where innovative solutions by Hoopr.ai come into play. Founded by music director and entrepreneur Gaurav Dagaonkar, Hoopr.ai offers a comprehensive solution to the music licensing puzzle. Combining Dagaonkar’s engineering precision with his deep music industry experience, Hoopr.ai provides India’s largest library of original, copyright-safe tracks. The platform bridges the gap between creators and high-quality music, making it easier than ever to enhance content with the perfect soundtrack.

Delving deeper, Indiantelevision.com caught up with Hoopr.ai co-founder & CEO Gaurav Dagaonkar to know more about his music career, Hoopr’s inception, growth strategies, projects and initiatives, and more…

Edited Excerpts:

On the inspiration to start Hoopr.ai, and your background in music and business shaping its development; Also the key challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them

I did my engineering from Mumbai and my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. This period of time really shaped my interest, inclination and exposure to music. Engineers are known to have a ‘jugaad’ or let’s-automate-it approach in life and coming from a premier business institute like IIMA, I was strongly instilled with business values where I got an opportunity to interact with some stellar peers, faculty and industry leaders.

I started my music career in 2007 and continued it till 2017. In these 10 years I realised that as a composer what was the legacy that I was building. The music and entertainment field can be quite short-lived as new talent comes in everyday and trends change at the drop of a hat. What is it that I can create which will be solely mine?

That’s when my co-founder, Meghna and I started Songfest in 2017. Songfest specialised in creating viral ads and campaigns for brands using music as a vehicle to build long-lasting and high-recall communication for the brand.

A few years into working on Songfest, we realised that not every brand can afford a large campaign but they may want to explore music as a strategy for their brands. This was also the unfortunate period when Covid struck and marketing budgets took a hit. Yet, digital content creation sky-rocketed with everyone aspiring to make content digitally. The OTT content boom also happened in this period. We felt that this was a massive opportunity. The Indian market clearly lacked a good music platform for copyright-safe music and there was a dearth of high-quality original Indian music on the existing platforms. That is how the idea of Hoopr was born in 2022. Today, two years later, we are India’s largest music library with over 12500 tracks, 6500 plus music artists working with us and 220,000 creators using our platform.

On Hoopr.ai differentiate itself from other music licensing platforms in the market

In the Indian market, Hoopr is a first-mover and a first-of-its-kind platform. There are several platforms available for stock music and royalty-free music. However, Hoopr is the only platform that covers a diverse range of original, high-quality Indian sounds, background music, instrumentals and soundtracks in multiple Indian languages.

For filmmakers, creators and brands, Hoopr becomes a one-stop solution for all their music needs - whether generic or bespoke.

We also work with a vast network of 220,000 plus creators via our music platform and hence we are equally capable of amplifying music and messaging through our platform, which is not available on any other platform currently.

We like to believe that we stand at the cusp of music, technology and community.

On Hoopr.ai supporting musicians in monetising their music, and the opportunities it offers them

I have worked as a singer-composer in the Indian music industry and continue to be associated with it for over 15 years now. I have realised that the music market is vastly driven by Bollywood or film music which is managed by labels and they are all at the end of the day for-profit companies looking to make profits on big releases. Due to this, they tend to get into a zone where they keep making more of what sells - the same type of songs, same artists and this makes breaking into the mainstream music scene very difficult for independent artists.

Hoopr provides a fair and equal platform for such artists. Doesn’t matter where they are based and what genre of music they make. As long as they are able to produce music that is original, platform-friendly and high quality, we are thrilled to work with them.

We are proud to state that today Hoopr has a network of over 6500 artists that we commission music from for our platform. This includes sound engineers, producers, singers, instrumentalists, etc.

On some success stories where Hoopr.ai significantly impacted a content creator or musician's project

Yes, we are very proud of the work we have done with some top creators such as Chef Ranveer Brar, Tanya Khanijow and Gaurav Taneja (Flying Beast).

All of Ranveer’s content on social media is backed by copyright-safe music from Hoopr.

We also did a fabulous bespoke song for Gaurav Tanejas’s Desh ka Dhoni video called Zidd Hai.

With Tanya Khanijow we collaborated with an exclusive Hoopr track called Safar Anjana.

There are many such stories to mention.

On your innovative music contests like 'Retro Reimagined' and 'Sing to Sync' and these contests contributing to the growth and engagement of Hoopr.ai's community of musicians and content creators

Sing2Sync is a platform-led property that we built that allows brands or labels to use our artist community to commission new tracks or create UGC recreations of their cult songs or language variations of their legacy soundtracks.

Retro Rewind was one such successful execution for a large music label, Universal Music Group. The mandate was to crowdsource multiple recreations of their cult track, Baahon ke Darmiyaan, from the classic film Khamoshi. They wanted to expand their existing catalog by adding innovative recreations. They also wanted to buy out the top five tracks and add it to their prolific catalog.

We executed this activity over a span of 90 days. The first step was to create an engaging contest page, which was promoted on social media and with our existing community of 6500 plus artists. We received close to 10,000 registrations, and 1270 submissions of which 160 songs qualified in the screening. We shortlisted the top 14 tracks for selection to the UMG panel. An esteemed panel from Hoopr and UMG jointly judged the shortlisted 14 tracks and finally UMG actually took home eight creations instead of the original commitment of five tracks.

On the upcoming projects or contests that Hoopr.ai has in the pipeline, and are there any new initiatives you’re working on as a music director

While we are not at liberty to discuss the details of upcoming projects, I can tell you that there are some major brand projects in the pipeline from some gigantic brands which you will see individual announcements about in the coming months.

Apart from that there are some major strides that Hoopr is poised to take in the music licensing industry but I would like to speak about it when the time is right.

I do miss my music as most of my time is now devoted to being a full-time CEO and running a company but yes there will be some interesting pursuits on that front as well.

On the trends you see emerging in the music licensing industry, and Hoopr.ai's positioning to capitalise on them

There are a bunch of macro trends that are shaping the licensing landscape in India as we speak. The first of those being the music streaming stats in India which seem to be doubling every three years. In 2020, India was streaming 230mn music streams, and today in 2024 that number stands at 470mn. Today 80 per cent of the top trending videos across YouTube are music videos. Globally, music has become the highest form of content that is being consumed and it also has a high repeat value unlike other formats.

Music labels and artists are becoming increasingly aware and alert of the loss of monetisation that they incur every time their music is being used without proper licensing or remuneration. Hence, we’ve seen them coming down hard on brands that use their music in an unauthorised manner and we’ve seen massive brands being engaged in legal battles that result in loss of goodwill and huge legal penalties.

Lastly, the meteoric rise in the size of the creator market in India, which is growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent year on year. The current size of this marketing in India is three to five million at a pessimistic best. Of these, only the top 1.9 per cent are able to monetise their content. One major reason for this is the lack of awareness around the use of copyrighted music for their content.

Hoopr works are the intersection of music, technology and community where by using our platform, brands can have access to copyright-safe music which will save them precious legal dollars, and creators can effectively monetise their content without fear of take-downs. And all of this is driven by a tech-first platform.

On your future plans for Hoopr.ai and its growth in the next few years

We envision a geography-agnostic, platform-led, tech-driven marketplace ecosystem where music artists, creators, and brands exist and thrive. This marketplace will give artists the opportunity to collaborate with other artists, secure brand deals and employ creators for digital amplification.

For creators, this becomes a one-stop shop to secure brand deals and promotional projects that help them monetize their channels all while having access to the highest quality of original, copyright-free music.

For brands, this becomes a turn-key solution, where they can license sounds and music for their brand, collaborate with artists for bespoke solutions and use Hoopr’s creator-verse to amplify their brand messaging.

At some point, Hoopr also envisions itself as a massive, platform-led label with the best musical talent on its roster and the default tech platform for all music monetisation and licensing needs for all independent artists or full-blown labels in the music industry. We aim to build a vast catalog with the best quality music in the world. There will come a day when Hoopr will be synonymous to Google for music search. We want people looking for music to just Hoopr it!