How Content Creator Dev Raiyani is Focusing on Music In Earnest

Dev Raiyani sets the record straight soon enough in an email interview that music is not an added dimension to being a content creator. “Music is something I want to do over creating content,” the 21-year-old artist says. That said, he’s never going to leave one for the other, knowing he has a “passion for both.”

Born and raised in Mumbai and currently studying undergrad in Los Angeles, Raiyani has – by his own admission on YouTube to his 125,000 subscribers – recorded a lot of his life on video. Vlogging his affable and sometimes meme-stuffed, peak Gen-Z life experiences, Raiyani also began releasing music around 2020 and those following him for his content naturally flowed to understand his hip-hop informed musical output, heard on songs like “Wait4me,” “Thinking Back” and “Cool Boy.”

The singer-producer has been steeped in music ever since. Raiyani says, “Over the past few years, I have learned new instruments and DAWs, collaborated with different artists, and experimented with the type of music I want to make. For example, I recently went to a tech-house party and became heavily inspired by it, so I started making music without lyrics, just beautiful synths and beats.”

While it might be a while until you hear a more electronic producer-centric record from Raiyani, he plays to his strengths on his latest single “ButYOU,” made in collaboration with Mumbai producer Dropped Out aka Rishi Thakker. Raiyani says he was originally working with his friend Liam McLaughlin on the song in his dorm about five months ago. The artist adds, “He then told me to actually try to use my voice, something I hadn’t really explored before, and that turned into this beautiful R&B vibe that we loved.”

Once he was back in Mumbai, Raiyani connected with Dropped Out and checked out the track. Dropped Out’s production has led to “butYOU” taking emphasis away from beats for the most part and becoming a wavy, late-night jam for longing, rooted in Raiyani’s chill-hop and pop influences. “The result was phenomenal,” Raiyani adds about the song.

As a bedroom singer-producer, he’s making music in his dorm every day. “Most of it, I scrap. I’ve just been experimenting with what I want to do,” Raiyani says.

The artist thought up a music video for “butYOU” with a 20 team in tow, but realized he hadn’t reached a stage where he could justify spending costs for it. “Instead I wanted to ask my listeners to film random aesthetic clips and send them to me, out of which I wanna make a video for it,” he says. With a short four-city tour that took place in 2022 in India, Raiyani is looking to shake off the stereotypes that come from being a digital creator who’s told to stick to making Reels instead of performing his songs live. This year is wholly about music and Raiyani says he can’t “wait to see what happens next.”

Listen to “butYOU” ft Dropped Out below.