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Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
The rock and roll flame may be on simmer, but it can never die down
I was eight years old, maybe younger, when I heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana. It was my first taste of rock and roll, and it opened my soul to a sound I didn't know existed. I remember jumping up and down in the living room with my brother as Kurt Cobain screamed in the backdrop of wailing electric guitar on VH1. I think it's safe to say that I knew the kind of music I would be obsessed with for the rest of my life before I knew that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. My deep fascination with this raw, uncut genre only grew in my teen years — not just because of my inclination, but because of how it influenced the culture around me. I remember my dad listening to Pink Floyd and Dire Straits at house parties with his friends. I remember teenagers around me taking guitar lessons, modelling their entire personalities after the legendary Axl Rose. I even remember begging my mom to buy me my first band t-shirt when I was just 11 years old — an oversized, grey top with the album art of The Beatles' 'Abbey Road' printed on it. In the early 2000s, independent music burst onto the Indian scene. As the obsession around rock and roll grew, so did the local bands, who may have started out with Led Zeppelin covers but soon found their own sound. It seemed that the thirst for rock could never be satiated — until today, when the craze seems to have died down. Nearly two decades later, the sound and soul of a genre, which once breathed second life into some of the biggest music movements of the time, seems lost. But for the veterans of the genre, rock and roll will survive as long as the spirit of rebellion is alive. In a candid conversation, legendary musician Subir Malik reminisced about how his band Parikrama, considered to be the biggest rock band of Asia at one point, used to play hundreds of college shows up until the 2010s. IITs and IIMs had a deep rock and roll society. Fast forward a decade, and almost no college hosts a rock night anymore. 'College kids in the early 2000s were listening to Floyd and Zeppelin, which is why they related to Parikrama's music. But after 2012, the sound shifted, and local rock and roll bands went into a deep decline,' Subir said. The 55-year-old musician, who founded Parikrama with his younger brother and college mates in the late 1980s, explained how the shift in the digital age is one of the major factors why the genre was subdued in the mid-2010s. 'One major reason behind this decline was the shift from a guitar base to a synth base. Another core reason is that earlier five or six musicians used to sit together with their instruments and compose a song. Now, with technological advancements, a kid with a laptop can sit and write and compose a whole song from his home,' Subir said. Raaghav, a budding music producer, helped me gain a deeper understanding of this technological shift. While the influence of rock and roll remains entrenched in the music we listen to now, he said, the shift is somehow justified. Young musicians would rather invest in a good laptop or a home setup than in bulky hardware like expensive electric guitars and massive amps. An amateur producer can now sample music off YouTube, rip any international music mixing software at zero cost, download beats from the infinite music platforms available now, or even make his own using a portable sound board attached to his personal computer. The reliance on software and soundboards, while more cost-effective, put an end to the raw sound of the typical 80s rock and roll. The shift to appliances from instruments produced clean, precise music, friendly for streaming and aesthetically pleasing, just as the demand for a 45-second drum solo in an eight-minute record came crashing down. The change became apparent to me during a nostalgic visit to my school in Noida, where students from different walks of life only united over one front, our annual music festival. It was the one event which was ours — loud, brash and steeped in personal rebellion. We used to cover the walls of the school with graffiti while blasting Megadeth songs in the corridors as teachers took a backseat. It is one of the few core memories I hold from my school days. To relive the past, I went back to my school fest a couple of years ago. I was ready to vibe once again, but what was once an ode to rock and roll was now a celebration of pop music. The shift from Megadeth to Maroon 5 caught me off guard. Not just the artists, but the tone of the event had changed. Teenagers now wore vintage band t-shirts off of Shein just for their aesthetic value, and the burn of rebellion behind rock and roll now simmered at a low flame. Don't get me wrong, people are still deeply passionate about the music they listen to, but somewhere along the way, the 'how' changed. Now, we don't wait for albums to drop; we just discover new music and artists through trending Instagram reels. We skip intros, loop the hook, and judge a track on the basis of the first 30 seconds. Rock and roll, with its messy solos, long buildups and unabashed energy, doesn't fit the format anymore. The time when each track demanded your attention, not your algorithm, is long gone. Now, long guitar solos are mostly limited to reels with a nostalgic filter on them. Rock and roll is more of a mood board than a movement, and honestly, I miss the noise. In a long conversation, Subir took me on a trip to the 90s and 2000s rock and roll scene, explaining with vivid passion how Parikrama, along with other big Indian rock bands, changed what the genre meant. How the youth of India saw rock and roll music as a wave of rebellion and a symbol of anti-establishment sentiment, which runs deep in the heart of every 20-something who chose to pick up a guitar once in their life. So, is rock and roll gonna survive the current paradigm shift in music? His response was simple, 'Of course it will.' He elaborated, 'After a pause of nearly a decade, Parkirama was invited to perform in seven top colleges across the country, a clear sign that the demand for the genre is still there. In fact, I attended a music festival a few years ago, dedicated solely to rock bands, and I was shocked to see the entire crowd filled with youngsters, most of them in their early 20s.' 'It is surely making a comeback, and the signs are there. In fact, you see a similar style of music in a lot of mainstream Bollywood tracks, a good example would be the Dil Dhadakne Do album. In fact, when it comes to the live scene, all the headliners in big music fests in India, be it Lollapalooza or Zomaland, are rock bands,' he said. Iconic guitarist Randolph Correia, who founded the iconic band Pentagram alongside Vishal Dadlani, is certain that rock and roll will never fade out. 'Music evolves, and almost everything we hear today i.e. modern music, comes from or has some relation to 50s, 60s, 70s rock and roll. Energy cannot be destroyed, it transforms and that's the world we live in today. Rock and roll ain't dead. It's on your phone and streaming services and it will keep haunting you for the rest of your life,' he said. My take? I believe that rock is something which is passed down from generations, taking up a new shape with every passing year. What Deep Purple was to my father, a band like Arctic Monkeys is to me. But will the generation after me embrace the genre with the same open heart that I did? The pattern of dissent that rock and roll follows — my dad's metal house parties as an escape from the suit-and-tie life; my siblings and I watching late-night televised concerts on V1H; and a bunch of kids reclaiming the school grounds at an annual music event — might never be replicated again, but the hope remains that its soul will survive for ages to come.
Hype Malaysia
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hype Malaysia
Mediaberg To Hold Nirvana A 'Tribute Experience' In KL This July; Ticketing & Seating Announced
Ever had your head banging to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' after hitting that repeat button over and over again? Yes, the good ol' days. Despite the passing of lead guitarist Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana name carries on for generations to come as tributes are still being made in their honour. For one night and one night only, Malaysians will have a chance to relive the unfiltered and raw energy of the legendary band Nirvana this 20th July 2025 (Sunday). Happening at JioSpace, Petaling Jaya, the Nirvana 'Tribute Experience', brought to you by Mediaberg, sets forth an experience like no other. From the group that brought KL The Linkin Park 'Tribute Experience', Mediaberg and the sell-out act hailed as the most authentic homage to he iconic rock band, Nirvanna: A Tribute To Nirvana, is setting the stage to a night filled with Nirvana's best tracks such as, 'Come As You Are', 'Heart-Shaped Box' and 'Lithium'. Known for their intense and emotionally authentic acts touring around the world, Nirvanna: A Tribute To Nirvana has an almost duplicate sound of sound, presence and passion of the band that continues to rock the world even after disbandment. With sold-out shows, fans can expect an experience of raw, unplugged energy with a night of endless nostalgia. The Nirvana 'Tribute Experience' At JioSpace, PJ Date: 20th July 2025 (Sunday) 20th July 2025 (Sunday) Venue: JioSpace, PJ JioSpace, PJ Time: 7 pm 7 pm Organiser: Mediaberg Mediaberg Ticketing: RM458 (VIP), RM358 (CAT 1), RM258 (CAT 2), RM158 (CAT 3) RM458 (VIP), RM358 (CAT 1), RM258 (CAT 2), RM158 (CAT 3) Ticket Link: Seating Plan: Reportedly, 85% of tickets have been told, so what are you waiting for? Head on over to the official Ticket2u website to secure your seats for the upcoming Nirvana 'Tribute Experience'! Sources: Instagram Alyssa Gabrielle contributed to this article What's your Reaction? +1 0 +1 0 +1 0 +1 0 +1 0 +1 0
The Hindu
26-06-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Getty drops copyright allegations in UK lawsuit against Stability AI
Getty Images dropped copyright infringement allegations from its lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI as closing arguments began Wednesday in the landmark case at Britain's High Court. Seattle-based Getty's decision to abandon the copyright claim removes a key part of its lawsuit against Stability AI, which owns a popular AI image-making tool called Stable Diffusion. The two have been facing off in a widely watched court case that could have implications for the creative and technology industries. Tech companies have been training their AI systems on vast troves of writings and images available online. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices with copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023. Getty's trial evidence sought to show the painstaking creative work of professional photographers who made the images found in Getty's collection, from a Caribbean beach scene to celebrity shots of actor Donald Glover at an awards show and Kurt Cobain smoking a cigarette. It juxtaposed those real photographs with Stability's AI-generated outputs. But it was a hard case to make in the U.K., in part because of a technicality. Stability, though based in London, did its AI training elsewhere on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. 'It was always anticipated to be challenging to prove that connection to the U.K. because we know that most of the training happened in the U.S.,' said AI legal expert Alex Shandro, who observed the trial for the law firm A&O Shearman. Getty's abandoning of the key infringement claim in its U.K. case marks the second legal setback this week for creative industries attempting to challenge the generative AI industry's business practices. In the U.S., a federal judge in California found that San Francisco-based Anthropic didn't break the law for training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books, but the company will still face a trial for taking those books from pirate websites instead of buying them. In its U.K. lawsuit, Getty alleged that Stability's use of its images infringed its intellectual property rights, including copyright, trademark and database rights. However, Getty's move indicates that the company didn't think its copyright allegations would succeed. After witness and expert testimony, Getty made the 'pragmatic decision to pursue only the claims for trade mark infringement, passing off and secondary infringement of copyright,' according to a written copy of its closing arguments. Getty continues to accuse Stability of infringing its trademark because its AI model was trained on images that included Getty's watermarks, which were sometimes reproduced by the image generator. Getty also alleges that Stability indirectly infringed its copyright because even if Stability's AI models were trained outside of Britain, it still faces local laws if the models produced images in the country. Shandro said removing that part of its U.K. complaint might also be a strategic decision by Getty to focus on a similar copyright claim that's still pending in a U.S. court. London-based Stability said it welcomed Getty's move. 'We are pleased to see Getty's decision to drop multiple claims after the conclusion of testimony,' the company said in a statement. "We are grateful for the time and effort the U.K. court has put forth to address the important matters in this case. We look forward to the court's final judgment.' Closing arguments are expected to last until the end of the week. A written decision from the judge is expected at a later date. How the judge addresses the remaining claims could be significant because they go to the heart of how the U.K. handles the distribution of AI tools that might have been lawfully trained in the U.S., said Nina O'Sullivan, a partner at British law firm Mishcon de Reya.
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Business Standard
26-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Getty drops copyright allegations in UK lawsuit against Stability AI
Getty Images dropped copyright infringement allegations from its lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI as closing arguments began Wednesday in the landmark case at Britain's High Court. Seattle-based Getty's decision to abandon the copyright claim removes a key part of its lawsuit against Stability AI, which owns a popular AI image-making tool called Stable Diffusion. The two have been facing off in a widely watched court case that could have implications for the creative and technology industries. Tech companies have been training their AI systems on vast troves of writings and images available online. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices with copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023. Getty's trial evidence sought to show the painstaking creative work of professional photographers who made the images found in Getty's collection, from a Caribbean beach scene to celebrity shots of actor Donald Glover at an awards show and Kurt Cobain smoking a cigarette. It juxtaposed those real photographs with Stability's AI-generated outputs. But it was a hard case to make in the UK, in part because of a technicality. Stability, though based in London, did its AI training elsewhere on computers run by US tech giant Amazon. "It was always anticipated to be challenging to prove that connection to the UK because we know that most of the training happened in the US," said AI legal expert Alex Shandro, who observed the trial for the law firm A&O Shearman. Getty's abandoning of the key infringement claim in its UK case marks the second legal setback this week for creative industries attempting to challenge the generative AI industry's business practices. In the US, a federal judge in California found that San Francisco-based Anthropic didn't break the law for training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books, but the company will still face a trial for taking those books from pirate websites instead of buying them. In its UK lawsuit, Getty alleged that Stability's use of its images infringed its intellectual property rights, including copyright, trademark and database rights. However, Getty's move indicates that the company didn't think its copyright allegations would succeed. After witness and expert testimony, Getty made the "pragmatic decision to pursue only the claims for trade mark infringement, passing off and secondary infringement of copyright," according to a written copy of its closing arguments. Getty continues to accuse Stability of infringing its trademark because its AI model was trained on images that included Getty's watermarks, which were sometimes reproduced by the image generator. Getty also alleges that Stability indirectly infringed its copyright because even if Stability's AI models were trained outside of Britain, it still faces local laws if the models produced images in the country. Shandro said removing that part of its UK complaint might also be a strategic decision by Getty to focus on a similar copyright claim that's still pending in a US court. London-based Stability said it welcomed Getty's move. "We are pleased to see Getty's decision to drop multiple claims after the conclusion of testimony," the company said in a statement. "We are grateful for the time and effort the UK court has put forth to address the important matters in this case. We look forward to the court's final judgment." Closing arguments are expected to last until the end of the week. A written decision from the judge is expected at a later date. How the judge addresses the remaining claims could be significant because they go to the heart of how the UK handles the distribution of AI tools that might have been lawfully trained in the US, said Nina O'Sullivan, a partner at British law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Mint
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
How music discovery became predictable
If I could, I'd pay serious money to travel 20-something years back in time to experience Nirvana's ground-breaking album, Nevermind, for the very first time again. Having borrowed a cassette from a schoolfriend, I found an opportune time to go to my parents' room and use the two-in-one music system—a 'deck". This wasn't a parent-friendly record; on Smells Like Teen Spirit, the main guy, Kurt Cobain, screams about his libido repeatedly. While I'd heard one Nirvana song—Come As You Are, via a stray MP3 on someone's CD—I had little idea what was coming next: a sonic thunderstorm that would blow my teenage brain right out of my ears. All of this today sounds like gibberish. 'Two-in-one"? 'Cassette"? 'MP3"? In the early-to-mid-2000s, these were essential terms in the cultural lexicon. Music consumption and discovery, as with every generation prior and since, was for millennials too dictated by the prevailing technology of the time, and indeed its limitations. Only, that particular period is the most tumultuous in recent music history. It was an era of upheaval, transformation, and chaos, as the world shifted from the physical to the digital: cassettes were commonplace and affordable (a standard ₹125), but they were being phased out. CDs were a popular if rather more expensive format. These were found, neatly arranged by name and genre, in brick-and-mortar shops, imagine. MP3s, available for download online, became a convenient and free alternative, existing in a lawless, peer-to-peer digital jungle via file-sharing software Napster and the clones that followed. While no longer a complete novelty, digital music wasn't yet pervasive either. But it was gaining traction, leaving the industry in turmoil as bands lost significant revenue and labels' bottomline got wrecked. Everything was illegal, pirated by amoral music nerds and spread widely by internet anarchists. Starved as we were of a lot of current music that just wouldn't release in India via conventional routes, we hit the download button. These trends defined how young people discovered their music. You could go to a Planet M to window-shop, and you'd end up finding a random band or artist that could ruin your week or change your life. Grey market spaces like Palika Bazaar—an underground and 100% illegal market in the heart of Delhi—became a source for complete (pirated) discographies, sorted into digestible MP3 folders. Cable TV, pre-streaming, was another place to find music. MTV and Channel V and, later, a channel called VH1, would play music videos all day long. NO MORE BARRIER TO ENTRY Musical tastes, for millennials and those preceding them, were shaped by a range of eclectic factors. The most exciting among these were the happy discoveries. The life-changing accidents. A random untitled mix-CD from a friend's friend's friend. A mislabelled song on the pirate software Limewire. Something you stumble upon on VH1 while channel-surfing. The songs you've never heard before, that catch you by surprise. It's this feeling where a greater force takes over your being, and compels you to dig deeper, and find out everything about that band. You have no choice but to start a new obsession immediately. Much of these tools of discovery have now, for reasons good and bad, been rendered obsolete. And while it's tempting to romanticise the past, it was also genuinely exhausting to hunt for music. Nothing ever released here on time; they played the same 50 songs on TV; MP3s were mislabelled and impossible to sift through; downloads took hours, days, weeks; tapes were dying, CDs were pricey. Today, for the price of a single cassette, a hundred-and-bit rupees, I have access to Spotify's entire library of over 100 million songs. (A relevant counterpoint here is that you're only renting this music; it could disappear tomorrow.) There was a prolonged battle for the soul of music but, by the mid-2010s, streaming had won out, becoming the preferred mode of listening globally. The barrier to entry was decimated. There are dozens of streaming platforms—the chief ones being Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple Music—each one offering (to Indians) affordable prices for their premium versions and free versions with ads. A quick sidenote: streaming platforms are a net evil to society; they've done untold damage to artists by offering them literal peanuts and devaluing art, while training listeners to never pay for what they consume. It's legalised theft. The P2P MP3 era that pioneered digitisation, while not without its problems, had a sense of reckless freedom and idealism to it. That chaos and anarchism has been replaced by a cold-blooded capitalism where the artist gets shafted while the guy above him lines his pockets. Indeed, Spotify—the loudest player in the market—faces regular criticism and has been the subject of high-profile boycotts and walkouts. (They've all returned, hat in hand, as bands are left in a no-win situation, having to pick between fans and principles.) And yet, at the same time the tech has liberated the listener by opening up access in this way. It's all very messy. NEEDLE DROPS We'll come back to streaming since it's such an omnipresent force in the world of discovery. But the olden methods—cable TV, physical stores, and such—have either withered away or been re-interpreted in modern settings. Instead of Channel V late-night broadcasts curated by Luke Kenny, people are discovering music accidentally through 'needle drops" on TV/web series they're watching on second screens. This is a curious inversion; previously, shows would use popular, recognisable songs as a cheat code to signal a pre-determined mood to the viewer. Like how no medical drama could resist throwing in the awful How to Save a Life by the Fray for a while. Now, that arrangement has flipped. Songs on shows—which are experienced differently as the viewer has an existing emotional relationship with the show's characters, as well as visual cues for context—take on new meaning and serve as introduction to an artist. Excited, the viewers rush to YouTube to comment in solidarity. They search online for more needle drops. SEO-driven aggregator websites and click-hungry publications rush to compile a list of all the songs featured on a show, which is duly converted into playlists by fans. There's also the rather more controversial method of discovery: Instagram Reels. There can be an inauthenticity and, if I may, a dishonesty about music written expressly for the purpose of going viral on social media in 30-second teasers. But it works because we all spend an inordinate amount of time on social media. Often, these songs have inescapable hooks. The format of social media short-form videos is such that the same template is reused, recycled, and rejigged during its window of relevance. Just by repeat exposure, these songs can get stuck in one's head and lead the listener on to a path of greater discovery. A lot of music listening, thus, seems to have shifted online. And to the ever-present cellphone. While previously there were different avenues—computers, music systems, Walkman or Discman, iPods—a streamlining of technology has meant that the phone is the primary device now. By way of outliers, we do have vinyl fetishists with record players; audiophiles; music nerds going deep on centralised forums like Reddit or Discord, using the Bandcamp/SoundCloud online catalogues, even buying CDs directly from young, independent bands. But mainstream habits revolve very much around streaming. In physical spaces, too, you may—at a restaurant or a bar—come across someone pointing their phone at the speaker playing music. They're 'Shazaming" a song so they can hear it again. Shazam, an app that processes a song being played and provides all details related to it, has been around forever. But it really caught fire over the past decade, and was acquired by Apple in 2018. Previously, you'd have to memorise the lyrics to look up later, or hope to hear the song again. It's a nice reminder, again, that technology can be such a valuable asset in the process of discovery. And just as often a hindrance. LIMITS OF THE ALGORITHM Which brings us to the elephant. The algorithm. Recently, I discovered something called Spotify Blend. Users can 'blend" your profile with that of a friend's, and Spotify will do its algorithm witchcraft to create a custom, shared playlist incorporating both people's musical preferences. It even offers a 'match score" to see if your music tastes align, a quick and foolproof way to tell if the relationship is going to last. You can add up to 10 friends in a Group Blend, each with their unique taste profile coming together to create one giant khichdi playlist for everyone to parse through. This is a modern retelling of community exchange; people have forever shared their music with friends in group settings. Except that we have an additional friend in the mix here: the algorithm. Streaming services offer a series of playlist options, from user playlists to 'algatorial" ones. The ones driven by the algorithm are of particular interest here. On Spotify, you get Time Capsules, Discover playlists, homepage recommendations, autoplay options—the algo never sleeps. Multiple AI and machine-learning processes work simultaneously to create this entity. Based on research, theories, and information available, the technology analyses songs via content filtering—looking at a song in isolation, studying its metadata and such—and collaborative filtering, where it's placed within a larger context. User behaviour, search history, lyrical themes, compositional structures—they're all factored in to craft personalised recommendations. I've even noticed the algorithm sometimes picking up the key in which a song is composed, and playing a series of songs that all start in that same key. Regardless of one's principled opposition to streaming, these features aid the process of discovery and make it so much easier. The algorithm is sharp, well-informed, intuitive, and will instantly gauge a listener's interest, guiding them to new places. But it raises a couple of semi-philosophical questions. For one, why should I allow the machine to tell me what to listen to? There's a volatility attached to discovery—repeat trial-and-errors driven by human emotions and external variance. Streaming, with its robotic efficiency, can flatten that unpredictability into a horizontal structure leaving little room for experiments. It knows what I like, and it'll keep feeding me. More importantly, what about the music that even I don't know I like? At a time when my music habits exclusively comprised alt-rocker misanthropes, I stumbled, on MTV, upon a song called Surfing on a Rocket by French electronica/dream pop duo Air. It led me down a circuitous path of cool electronic music I'd never have found otherwise. Algorithms—on Netflix, on social media, on music streaming—can create bubbles and echo chambers. They keep feeding you versions of things you already like and engage with. And they hide you from a world of discovery that you don't even realise exists. Those avenues for happy accidents, while very much still around, can get constricted by the self-limiting nature of algorithmic excellence. It's a complex subject, riddled with questions around access, ethics, tech manipulation, listener behaviour, maybe some moral panic—as such, all discussions around art and consumption do eventually circulate within these idealism labyrinths. And conversations around the algorithm deserve critical examination without being tainted by generational bias. But what remains steady is that new generations find novel ways to access and consume music; it can feel alienating—even existentially distressing—to those on the outside. Maybe we're losing some recipes. But the music landscape is forever fluid and evolving. And people within it will always find systems that work for them. Akhil Sood is a Delhi-based writer.
