With a vibrant online presence and over a million-strong fan base, the singer is shattering the old ways of becoming a star

Darshan Raval calls YouTube his BFF. It isn’t far-fetched — in the four years that the singer, and India’s rising pop star, has found fame, his YouTube page has raked in 135 million views and about 1.5 million subscribers.

His fans, who call themselves The Darshaners, are, unsurprisingly, 20-somethings and teens, who lap up every romantic song he puts out. And Raval, in spite of his 2.5 million Instagram followers and 3.4 million fans on Facebook, wants to be seen as their friend, even in matters of the heart. “I’m really blessed to have so many people loving me and supporting me, and now it has become a responsibility,” he says. Perhaps one of the reasons why he has agreed to turn ‘love dost’ on Dil Beats, MTV Beats’ new show that takes on the issues of millennial love.

The 24-year-old belongs to a growing tribe of young musicians — like Armaan Malik, Arjun Kanungo and Arunaja (who recently hit a million views for her début English single, ‘Broken’) — who unabashedly explore pain and joy in their songs. His songs, however, haven’t always met with the success they do now. “I used to get very few views and comments,” says the Ahmedabad-bred, Mumbai-based singer, of the time when he started his YouTube channel in 2008 (after he’d learned to play guitar via video tutorials). “The negative comments were more visible, so I used to read them, though I never took them seriously. The most important person while making music was myself.”

With a vibrant online presence and over a million-strong fan base, the singer is shattering the old ways of becoming a star

Darshan Raval calls YouTube his BFF. It isn’t far-fetched — in the four years that the singer, and India’s rising pop star, has found fame, his YouTube page has raked in 135 million views and about 1.5 million subscribers.

His fans, who call themselves The Darshaners, are, unsurprisingly, 20-somethings and teens, who lap up every romantic song he puts out. And Raval, in spite of his 2.5 million Instagram followers and 3.4 million fans on Facebook, wants to be seen as their friend, even in matters of the heart. “I’m really blessed to have so many people loving me and supporting me, and now it has become a responsibility,” he says. Perhaps one of the reasons why he has agreed to turn ‘love dost’ on Dil Beats, MTV Beats’ new show that takes on the issues of millennial love.

The 24-year-old belongs to a growing tribe of young musicians — like Armaan Malik, Arjun Kanungo and Arunaja (who recently hit a million views for her début English single, ‘Broken’) — who unabashedly explore pain and joy in their songs. His songs, however, haven’t always met with the success they do now. “I used to get very few views and comments,” says the Ahmedabad-bred, Mumbai-based singer, of the time when he started his YouTube channel in 2008 (after he’d learned to play guitar via video tutorials). “The negative comments were more visible, so I used to read them, though I never took them seriously. The most important person while making music was myself.”

From the heart

Just this month, he performed in four cities: Delhi, Nagpur, Haldia and Baroda. And while he’s known to close his live shows with a Bollywood song — ‘Chogada’ off 2018’s Loveyatri — most of the hour is dedicated to his own songs. Modern electronic pop that twists and turns, and is slickly supplied by Raval’s saccharine voice. Tracks like ‘Do Din’ (with over 40 million views), ‘Tera Zikr’ and even the latest for MTV Beats show Dil Beats, ‘Kaash Aisa Hota’, all talk about love and romance. The songs don’t stray too far from a hit formula, but it builds his image as a Gen Z favourite.

Nirmika Singh, executive editor of Rolling Stone India, who had Raval on the cover this month, says, “He’s a good looking star, he’s making songs that click. He’s shattering the old ways of becoming a music star. And he’s here to stay because he’s not looking at Bollywood.”

Looking beyond Bollywood

For every song that he puts out, there’s a lot that he turns down (at least 20 singing offers from Bollywood and four music reality shows). His manager Naushad Khan, CEO of talent agency E-Positive Entertainment, says, “He doesn’t want to be burned out singing 100 songs a year. [He will release] two or three singles in a year and do two or three film songs too.” Khan, who also runs a record label, Indie Music, has released Raval’s songs for the last year or so, and their reach has been amplified, courtesy a distribution deal with Sony Music India. Where songs uploaded on Raval’s channel get a few million views, songs like ‘Shab Tum Ho’, ‘Bhula Diya’ and ‘Baarish Lete Aana’ on Indie Music’s channel have upwards of 35 million views each.

In the world of mainstream music in India, where trends keep changing, labels and artist managers are constantly battling to get their slice of listenership. Raval is no different, but insists that it is not a competition. Veteran talent manager Ben Kurian Thomas, who has worked with the likes of Sonu Nigam and Vishal-Shekhar, and now manages pop-rock band Sanam, says that the upward digital consumption of music — specifically non-Bollywood music — is not a bubble. “If Darshan or Sanam or anyone else has a fan base as strong as they have, all they have to do it is retain it. How? By creating more content and reaching out to people. With digital, if today you have 10 fans, the same song is going to give you 200 other fans in three years’ time. Digital lasts forever; you can take a song and push it back again. You’re going to be remembered forever.”