Music director Emil and actor Ganesh
Ever wondered why all the Kannada television channels are playing music reality shows all the time? And only movies with good music scoring are crossing hundred days in the box office? May be we all should agree with the reason that indeed it is nothing but the beginning of Musical Era. Budding singers are having their best of the time behind the screen. Going by the opinion of the Kannada film industry these local singers are not as happy when it comes to remuneration packages.
The time seems to have changed over the years. It must be said in the last two years there isn’t a much increase in the remuneration packages given to the both lead male and female singers. Hamsalekha, who has been in the industry for more than 25 years is under an impression that the film industry has gone completely commercial and doesn’t care much of the plight of both music directors as well as singers. “Whether the remuneration packages of singers has increased or not that’s the not the issue here. The industry is worried more of making better use of the singers and music directors with low payments. There never was a situation like this before. This growing negative trend is breeding a lot of unprofessional singers to the industry. They are not well trained and in many a times they can’t even speak proper Kannada. In these times, singers from bollywood are taking high remuneration packages where as the local ones are given very low amount,’ says Hamsalekha.
Well-known singer Sonu Nigam gets the highest payment of Rs 2.5 lakh per song. And stands at the top in the list. Whereas singer from Karnataka Rajesh Krishnan is being paid Rs 15,000 per song. Music director V Manohar says, “Gone are the days when singers are judged by their performance in front of the mic. But now things have changed. Singers are sold by their popularity and industry concerns. Sonu Nigam has a good selling proposition in the market. So, any audio company would come forward to pay him hefty package. I don’t think Kannada singers would ever afford this in near future. So, the difference between the highest paid and the lowest paid is just because of industrial concerns and not by their performance.”
After the success of the film Mungaru male, lead music directors seems to be in a hurry that singer Sonu Nigam has to sing at least one song in a movie. V Harikrishna says, “the topic of discussion is not against Sonu Nigam or the highest paid singer. I select singers purely on their performance and their necessity with the tune. All these days I have produced scoring based only on this. So, I’m really not worried of remuneration packages or the audio market.” Music director G Abhiman Roy shares an opinion that music directors should make better use of local singers than singers from bollywood. “What’s the point in paying a lakh to a singer who doesn’t know anything about Kannada language and sinigs songs in English notes. I have al ways tried to give out new opportunities to budding local singers than others. Local singers know the language and they also know the meaning of every word. So, the output of th quality will be at par than non-speaking Kannada singers. Hope the local singers will deserve good remuneration packages,” says Abhiman. With more number of films seeing success in box office and new singers are being shown a good plat form in singing, it has to be wait and seen whether the right one deserve good package in coming days.
Box Item:
Female Lead Singers
Supriya Ramachandran -8,000
Nanditha – 8,000
Shreya Ghoshal –50,000
Chitra – 8,000
Male Lead Singers
Sonu Nigam – 2.5 lakh
Kumar Sanu – 40,000
Badri Prasad – 10,000
Ramesh Chandra – 10,000
Udith narayan – 40,000
Karthik – 40,000
Rajesh Krishnan- 10,000
Hemanth – 10,000
Kunal Ganjawala – 40,000
S P Balasubramaniam – 40,000
Shankar Mahadevan – 40,000
Chetan – 10,000
L N Shastri – 10,000
Hariharan – 40,000
cinemaah
