Everyone knows the song, but nobody knows the singer who sang it. Perhaps nobody really cares. In a country where film music has always been a Lata gem or Rafi magic or more recently a Shreya or Sunidhi number, the transition is a bit unsettling for many music lovers. "My young daughter often plays new songs at home. When I ask her for the singer's name, very often she doesn't know who sang it. It makes me very sad because we grew up listening to our favourite singers," says Alka Yagnik, a National Award-winning playback singer.
"Can you name a singer from the recent hit film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani? Or can you remember any hit songs of mine or my contemporaries in the past two years?" asks Babul Supriyo, who has sung many memorable romantic numbers. Go ahead, quiz your antakshari friends about the voice behind the latest hit and all you would get is an indifferent shrug or a raised eyebrow or, if you are lucky, an informed guess. "It is not that there are no great melodies or hits these days. It is just that the importance of the singer has diminished in the past few years," says Supriyo.
His friend, playback singer Shaan, the voice behind many soft romantic hits, recently called playback singing obsolete. Just like telegraph and post, he said. He refuses to talk about the issue anymore, as he feels he has done "enough talking on the subject", but he says categorically that technology has changed the singing scene drastically. It's RIP playback singer superstar.
"This new trend is not because society and films are changing. It is mainly because of digitisation and technology. Thanks to technology you can change the scale, pitch, voice, sound... A singer is not that important anymore," says Shaan
Supriyo says a few software such as Melodyne that cost less than $200 are the game changers.
Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-04/news/41034422_1_playback-babul-supriyo-shaan
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