Padma Shri and Grammy Award winner Shankar Mahadevan has once again underlined the need for honesty and creative freedom in Indian music, this time by backing it with action. The celebrated musician has announced the launch of Goongoonalo, an artist-owned platform set to go live on January 16, aimed at giving musicians a space to create without commercial pressure or creative compromise.Mahadevan, who has consistently spoken about the strain of speed-driven formats and market-led expectations on musicians, said the platform was born out of the absence of spaces where music can be created without urgency or fear.
‘Music cannot be manufactured like a product’
Reiterating his long-held belief, Mahadevan said, “Music cannot be manufactured like a product. The moment you start calculating success before emotion, something essential is lost.”While acknowledging that cinema has given Indian music its scale and reach, he also pointed out the invisible constraints that come with it—deadlines, briefs, and narrative demands—which often leave little room for intuitive or reflection-led compositions. Songs that evolve slowly, he noted, rarely find a platform in such systems.“There are songs we carry for years,” he said. “Not because they aren’t good, but because there was no place for them. This is that place.”
Addressing imbalance between artists and ownership
Goongoonalo’s artist-owned structure directly addresses what Mahadevan has described as a persistent imbalance in the industry, where creators are expected to operate like entrepreneurs without real ownership or control.“Artists are not businessmen by training,” he said. “Yet we are constantly asked to think like one—without being given control.”According to Mahadevan, the platform is designed to restore that balance by putting creators at the center of decision-making, ownership, and value creation.
A platform designed around artists, not algorithms
Sherley Singh, CEO of Goongoonalo, echoed this philosophy, stating that the platform was built to serve artists rather than force them into pre-existing digital molds.“We did not want artists to fit into a platform. We wanted to build a platform that fits the artist—where creation is not rushed, rights are not diluted, and collaboration is not transactional,” he said.
Bringing audiences closer to the creative process
Mahadevan also stressed that audiences have not lost interest in meaningful music, but have instead been distanced from the stories behind it.“People don’t just love songs,” he said. “They love stories—how a song came into being, what it struggled through, what it survived.”Beyond finished tracks, Goongoonalo will feature conversations, workshops, masterclasses, and live sessions, allowing listeners to engage with music as a living, evolving process rather than just a final product.
‘Creative work should not feel like survival’
Speaking directly to younger musicians, Mahadevan offered a note of caution against reducing creativity to a survival exercise.“If an artist is only trying to stay afloat, something precious is lost,” he said, adding that music does not need validation—only space. With its January 16 launch, Goongoonalo positions itself as an alternative model in the Indian music ecosystem—one that prioritizes freedom, ownership, and long-form creative value over speed and algorithms.
