Play DMF’s Anshul Garg on How He Got Into the Music Business

Among the questions that pop up during a search for music entrepreneur Anshul Garg is, ‘What does Anshul Garg do?’ It’s tough to pin down, but he’s more than just a music business mind when it comes to his label Play DMF, which branched out of the original label, Desi Music Factory.

Garg says over a call that he was originally a singer and had a strong connect to music that he turned into a business. He adds, “I have a little bit of pulse of the Indian audience, that’s why you see my Desi Music Factory channel – I produced around 120 songs over there, you’d see around 70 to 80 songs have hit over 100 million views.” The real number, at least going by what’s on YouTube, is around half of that, but that’s still a formidable feat. It’s a different matter that most of these songs were by artists like Tony Kakkar and Neha Kakkar, who enjoy the mass popularity, but have often been criticized for not bringing musical depth to their craft.

Nevertheless, those hits have elevated the likes of Garg’s career and led to more diverse artists being showcased via Play DMF. Most recently, they collaborated with Virgin Music Group to put out a few singles including “Yimmy Yimmy,” a France-meets-India Afrobeats-informed song featuring singer Tayc, India’s Shreya Ghoshal, actor Jacqueline Fernandez, composer Rajat Nagpal and more. Ghoshal was also tapped for “Guli Mata,” the 2023 song with Moroccan artist Saad Lamjarred. In what the entrepreneur calls “the biggest non-film contract of India” with Virgin, which will run for the next five years.

Garg reveals that Ghoshal is also part of their next project, an Arabic song “Zaalima” with Moroccan artist DYSTINCT, which comes with a video starring actor-model Mouni Roy. It will be his third international release and he feels it’s one way to stay atop in the fast-changing, trend-chasing music world. “I think every six months, you have to put up something different, people are gonna get bored of one kind of music very quickly. So it’s become a little difficult, tricky also, but for us, because moving to the international market, has helped.” He talks about how “Guli Mata” was met with some apprehension within his circles but it eventually went on to find success (at over 338 million views on YouTube), because Garg saw the bigger picture. “It’s worked for us because Arabic-speaking people are very much inclined to watch Bollywood music,” he adds.

Within projects like “Yimmy Yimmy,” Garg’s fingerprints are all over different aspects – from tweaking lyrics to convincing artists over creative calls. Outside of the studio, he gets into A&R, producer and music supervisor type roles for Play DMF, which is how he enlisted Tayc alongside a celebrated voice like Ghoshal. Garg has often enlisted Ghoshal to work on his songs simply because he considers her “the best singer.” He adds, “I told her, ‘As many songs I can do with you is a blessing for me.’ I’ve heard so many singers, but when I hear Shreya in the studio, she doesn’t need anything, I don’t think we even treat those vocals because she sings beautifully.”

For all the work he does outside of Bollywood, Garg doesn’t say he’s necessarily preferring mainstream Indian music outside of the film space. Play DMF did release the soundtrack to action/comedy flick Selfiee last year. “There is a way of working in Bollywood music, they hire a composer who makes the songs for the film,” he says. If Garg and Play DMF have to get involved on their own terms, he says he’d like to be A&R, music supervisor and work with composers for a film soundtrack. To that end, he’s chasing “two really big films” to sign on in a couple of months.