HIVE INDUSTRY SESSION #05: Enriching Music Scenes and Artists the “DeccanAlt” Way
Neon Culture is transforming India’s independent music scene through artist consultancy, music curation, and its flagship Deccan Alternative Music Conference (DAMC), set to showcase Kerala’s vibrant music culture in Kochi this February.

Neon Culture and its drive to build sustainable and cohesive music spaces through the Deccan Alternative Music Conference
By Shashwat Hota
In the vast landscape of the Indian independent music industry, Neon Culture is carving out a space for itself, focussing on the music cultures and scenes of the country. Founded in 2023 and based out of Bangalore, Neon Culture has consistently worked towards developing a dynamic and self-sufficient independent music industry. Providing consultancy services to artists looking to improve outreach, work on their artist persona, build communities, and more, Neon Culture aims at taking independent artists and making them export-ready. Other services include music supervision, music curation, general consultancy, market research, and business development.
The Deccan Alternative Music Conference is their flagship annual conference, which focuses on grassroots-level initiatives and innovation that are taking place in the independent music scene. The inaugural edition was held at their home base in Bangalore. This year, DAMC is travelling to the port city of Kochi for two days, 7th and 8th February 2025. With its extravagant music scenes, Kerala has been at the forefront of producing and promoting world-class artists in the past few years. Its rich history, cultural diversity and heritage only add more flavour to its music. Kochi promises to be an exciting prospect as a host city.
At the conference, Neon Culture will be presenting its second music city survey after presenting the first survey on Bangalore at Measure of Music and All About Music. The second survey will be conducted in the host city, Kochi. There will be masterclasses, workshops, case studies, and presentations focused on the crowd, consisting of students, artists, industry professionals, and music enthusiasts. The conference will also showcase performances by independent sounds who are new to the music scene and want to connect with industry professionals and other artists.
At the helm of this thriving organisation are two experienced young founders, Vishruti Bindal (Co-Founder & MD, Strategy) and Prarthana Sen (Co-Founder & MD, Operations). We sat down with these minds that birthed the DeccanAlt for a chat ahead of the conference to learn more about their vision, experiences in the first edition, and what they look forward to in the coming edition.
Shashwat Hota: What sets apart the music scene of the Deccan region from other music scenes in the country?
Vishruti Bindal: We think all the music scenes in India are unique in their own right and wouldn’t be able to pick out what sets one or a few of them apart from others! However, with the music scenes in the Deccan region, we see a lot of scope to explore and highlight them as they don’t get enough spotlight in the “mainstream” music space yet.
Shashwat: How do you see the Indian independent music landscape change in the future, and how do you want DAMC to contribute to that change?
Prarthana Sen: The Indian independent music landscape is already changing, and strides are being made in live music opportunities, marketing and label services support, music publishing, and rights awareness. Paired with the success of our first artists breaking through on the global stages and platforms, we do believe that the time for realising music’s economic and trade potential is surely approaching.
In this larger movement, we hope DAMC will spark important conversations, be a catalyst for artists and music business professionals to upskill and learn new things about the business and become almost a lab for incubating the next wave of innovation and cooperation among stakeholders.
Shashwat: A project like DAMC aims to build a community and exchange information in the world of music business. How has the experience been for you both when building this project from the ground up?
Vishruti: Very wholesome if we were to put it into one word. Our economic impact analysis paints an impressive picture, and we are very proud of the traditional success metrics we have been able to use. Yet, our best memories from building this come from the moments when we both have been able to program sessions that inspire us, hear from artists about how much the showcase helped them, or see our industry peers collaborating with each other based on a conversation they had at the conference. It’s truly inspiring to see so many people come together through an event we have created!
Shashwat: Give us some highlights from the first edition of DAMC. What are you looking forward to the most in the coming edition?
Prarthana: We can say everything was a highlight in the first edition! We’ll narrow it down to our top 3:
- The installation of a digital musical instrument for people with disabilities by Fulbright scholar Calvin McCormack.
- The quiet room where we curated books by local authors and arranged seating so people could take a break from networking, nap or simply reflect. Conferences are overwhelming in every way, and we wanted to create a haven to retreat from them.
- The venue itself, its sustainable practices, and the fact that we were able to minimise the amount of waste generated, is something very important to us.
We are looking forward to building on all of this for the second edition. We are also excited to have a conference theme this edition: Looking Outward // Looking Inward, that will give our programming a lot more focus and intention.
Shashwat: For the second edition, DAMC travels to Kochi, the first city other than the home base. What is it about Kochi's music and culture that drove your decision to choose it as the host city for DAMC 2?
Vishruti: Kochi occupies a very interesting space in the arts and culture sector, and this has been the case for a few years now. With the recent rise of independent music, especially in hip-hop and electronic genres, and the new music festivals starting up there, people in the music industry have been talking about it. It has had a thriving film industry for decades, has been hosting the biennale for over a decade and has various types of artists congregating there for collaborations. It is also one of the most prominent centres for traditional music and folk arts. All of these reasons led to our decision to choose it as the host city for the next edition, and we have no doubt that we will learn so much from Kochi.
Shashwat: The Indian independent music scene has seen significant growth and opportunities in the past decade. Although, there is a long way to go. What are some things you think we can learn from certain developed music markets around the world? What are the attributes that you would want to see getting implemented in India?
Prarthana: If the Indian independent music scene can do so much by just sheer will and being scrappy, imagine what we can achieve with better infrastructure and support at the policy level. This is why we keep highlighting the importance of robust data and actionable suggestions that can be shared with relevant public and private bodies for implementation across states and the country. We can learn a lot about this from developed music markets. We also want to make a case for music export as we finally have an export office (yay!). But can we also consider how India’s size and diversity can be seen as a setup similar to the EU, with many member states setting up trade bodies and funding for artists to travel among them? If we started viewing India’s independent music scene through that lens, we could do so much for intra-country export and cultural development.
Srishti Das:: Vishruti and Prarthana, you both do so much more than this conference. Could you share some instances of bringing your experiences to enhance the conference - from Vishruti’s work with Music Cities or Prarthana’s with Sofar Sounds?
Prarthana: My experience organising Sofar’s global community meetups for hundreds of curators in cities I had never visited gives me the project management overview to think of the finer details going into the conference planning so that delegates and speakers have the most comfortable experience within the resource constraints we have currently.
Vishruti: I have worked across multiple global conferences, talent buyer programs and education programs with Sound Diplomacy in various roles - project management, marketing strategy, program curator, educator, etc. This has immensely helped me work in various capacities going into DAMC. Working within the music cities topics also brought to the table some of the methodology and language to articulate and communicate the impact DAMC has across various sectors. My role at Midem in 2021, organising the Talent Exporter Program, also helped bring ideas and networks to DAMC’s DeccanAlt Showcase.
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Hivewire is an independent music industry publication launched in June 2023 by Srishti Das and supported by Akriti, Shashwat Hota and Yatin Srivastava. This dynamic newsletter offers a unique perspective on the music industry, focusing on emerging markets and the rapidly growing music cultures gradually making their mark globally.