Composer-singer Anirudh Ravichander, who works primarily in Tamil and Telugu cinema as a music director, made two major announcements this week. The first was about the launch of his label Albuquerque Records through which he plans to build a catalogue of both movie soundtracks as well as pop music with a focus on south Indian regional languages.
The former will comprise some of his OSTs for films while the latter will include releases by him and those by upcoming artists, who have been invited to send in their completed demos. With Albuquerque Records, Anirudh—who is often referred to by only his first name—aims to establish “a long-term music business rooted in ownership, independence, and original storytelling”.
To aid him in the initiative, he has enlisted former Sony Music executive B. Kaushik, who led the pop division at the label and worked with Anirudh at the time of the release of his breakthrough smash ‘Why This Kolaveri Di?’ in 2012. Kaushik has been appointed the label head and COO of Albuquerque Records, which Anirudh says “is an important step for me, both creatively and strategically”.
Its arrival sees him join the likes of Indian composers such as Amit Trivedi (AT Azaad), Salim-Sulaiman (Merchant Records) and most recently, AR Rahman (Rooh Records) to have founded labels in recent years. However, while the rest of them created the companies to showcase their work outside of films, it’s notable that Anirudh—who consistently ranks among the top ten most streamed artists in India, on DSPs such as Spotify and JioSaavn—plans to put out some of his soundtracks through Albuquerque Records.
His other big news? He’s going back on the road, with a new series of concerts entitled ‘Rockstar Anirudh XV: 15 Years With You’, through which he will celebrate his decade-and-a-half-long career so far. The tour will kick off in Hyderabad where he will perform for the first time, on 21 March at the Gachibowli Outdoor Stadium.
Over 150,000 people registered for a shot at buying tickets for the show, which is being co-produced by events company Brand Avatar and BookMyShow’s TribeVibe division. It’s likely then to be a sold-out event, given that the venue has a seating capacity of 30,000, and could possibly accommodate a few thousands more on the ground level.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com ’
