Blogswara is an internet music community created by and for amateur musicians. This community acts as a common platform for these amateur musicians to showcase their talent to the world by producing music and sharing it over the internet. They also have a website with the name BlogSwara (http://www.blogswara.in/). It is also a free-music movement where visitors/listeners can download the mp3 files of the fresh and original songs. There are 63 people involved with BlogSwara to the date and the community is still growing.

The beginning

Audio-blogging (or Music-blogging) in India has led to several innovative ways of producing music for people. One such endeavor is BlogSwara, a website for free downloadable original music, founded by Joseph Thomas, a blogger from Thrissur, Kerala, India. When he started audio-blogging in July 2005, he had no idea that he would initiate a project like BlogSwara. At first, he started recording regular songs without background music and placed them online. Then came Karaoke tracks which allowed people to record their voice over the Karaoke track.

Narayan Venkitu, a Chennaite in the US, wrote and composed a song called Vaazhvu Chezhikka and sent it to Joseph, who sang the song and sent it to an IIT Chennai student, Ajit Gopalakrishnan, for orchestration.

That was their first venture. Thanks to the wonderful blogging grapevine, other musicians heard about them. Soon, Senthil, a blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

ger from Chennai, suggested Joseph to do something to bring music bloggers across the globe together. Thus, began the concept of BlogSwara, a collaborative internet music album. The name BlogSwara was suggested by another music blogger, Ganesh.

The music on BlogSwara is currently restricted to four languages — Malayalam, Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

, Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

 and Kannada

Kannada language

Kannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...

. The bloggers manage everything — lyrics, music, orchestration, vocals, recording, and mixing. This community even has a couple of celebrity musicians including Pradip Somasundaran

Pradip Somasundaran

Pradip Somasundaran , also known as Pradeep Somasundaram, is an Indian playback singer.-Academic career:He holds an M.Sc Degree in Electronics from the Andhra University Visakhapatnam and an M.Phil Degree in Electronics from Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappally and is currently working as...

, a playback singer from Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

.

The Process

Amateur musicians team up with other musicians, lyricists, and composers to create a song or someone is chosen from the existing talent pool of BlogSwara. When everything is finalized (lyrics, music composition, orchestration and mixing), the song is submitted to a selection panel. The panel will review the submissions and pick the songs based on freshness, vocals, recording quality, lyrics, variety and so on and announce them to the submitters with feedback/suggestions for tweaking. The tweaked songs are finally released as a new Blogswara version.

Albums

• BlogSwara Version 1 was released in May 2006 and it has 10 songs.

• BlogSwara Version 2 was released in November 2006 and has 7 songs.

• BlogSwara Version 3 was released in March 2007 and it has 9 songs.

• BlogSwara Version 4 was released in December 2007 and it has 7 songs.

• BlogSwara Version 5 was released in December 2008 and it has 14 songs.

• BlogSwara Version 6 was released in March 2010 and it has 14 songs.

External links

• BlogSwara - Official website
• Deccan Radio - Interview with Joseph Thomas, Founder of Blogswara
• The Hindu - MUSIC TO EARS: Blogswara Version 2
• The Indian Express: Netting a Tune
• The Hindu Business Line