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ONE FOR ALL Shael Oswal

Singer Shael Oswal’s new album, Sun Le… Ab Yeh Jahan, has different genres of music that are bundled into eight songs. This, he says, is a conscious effort to cater to a variety of listeners. Love ballads are his personal favourite, and Shael would love to do a complete album in that style, but what’s stopping him is the lack of a market.

“Now the remix phase has gone down. People want to hear some good original music, but at the same time they want to hear different kinds of music. That’s the reason I decided to try my hand at all kinds of music in my fourth album. Single genre albums don’t sell much,” says the musician who started his musical career with his first album, Kahan Hai Tu.

The Mayo College and Boston University alumnus agrees that the sale of private albums has gone down, as has the royalty money an artiste gets and all because of the advent of MP3s. “People no longer want to buy CDs for Rs. 125, when they can get an MP3 for one-fourth the price and with many more songs. There was a time when a private album would sell one lakh copies but now 30,000 – 40,000 is a good record. So it is difficult to say whether an album did well or not by looking at its sales. I feel happy as long as the audience appreciate my songs,” says the Mumbai-based Shael, whose blank CD sales business keeps him busy. Shael has already made his way into Bollywood by singing for music director Aadesh Srivastava. “I have sung two songs in his film. It has Milind Soman in the lead but it couldn’t be completed as Amrish Puri died with 20 per cent of the dubbing still left. But it will release by this year,” he says, ending on an optimistic note.

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