This article about jhankar beats was a great read. It brought back many memories of childhood in India. While I had observed the T-Series phenomenon up close, did not know the wonderful backstory that has to do with being customer obsessed and making music accessible to everyone. It's about meeting the customer where they are:
Bhushan Kumar, chairman and managing director of T-Series, tells Vogue India that it all started when his father, the late Gulshan Kumar, found out that truck drivers were unable to listen to older songs by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar because the low-cost sound systems in their vehicles were not equipped to play them without distorting them. These songs already came with minimal production, in mono recording, and when they were played on the truck speakers, they’d distort and crackle even more.
“When he interacted with rickshaw drivers up north, they told him the same thing, that as much as they like listening to original songs by Mohd Rafi, a cover version by Sonu Nigam just had better quality.”
I grew up listening to popular Bollywood music exclusively on T-series cassettes. We traded them with friends, made mix-tapes that reflected our "unique" taste. Hearing the songs ad nauseum outside the house was the reason we got to understand what we found most appealing and knew them so well. My parents like many of their generation were quite disdainful of such music and the sound quality of T-series. They liked things more old fashioned, mellow and "classy". If we as kids needed HMV budget to have access to the music our parents did not think much of. it would have never happened. T-series was cheap and parents were okay that we binged on it, even if they complained that the sound hurt their nerves.
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