Arjun Kanungo was one of the panelist at All About Music conference in August 2024. Kanungo is not just a singer now, but an entrepreneur, forming his own company One Mind Music with collaborations in Japan and investing his efforts to promote indie music.

In a chat with Verus Ferreira, he recounts the making of his two albums, his tryst with Japan, and his future plans.

You were one of the speakers at the All About Music conference. How excited were you to be a part of this event?

I'm very excited as it's the first time I'm on a panel. The last time I was there a few years ago, I was talking about the importance of YouTube Shorts. I’m very excited to learn more things about the music industry. So much has changed in the last two years and so I’m very excited to be invited as a speaker on one of the most important panels, which is about how artists make money. A lot of the co-panelists with me are friends of mine. 

From singer to music entrepreneur. Since my last interview with you in November 2022,  you started your own company One Mind Music? Can you tell us something about it?

One Mind Music is basically, something that other labels cannot be, which is super agile in terms of the music landscape. We want to be an artist services company, but we also want to be a music label and we plan on not being one or the other.We're going to be shifting between what is required for artists, for our artists, depending on the need of the hour. So we wanted to be the first music label from India to go global. We've already decided that, and that's going to be our mission statement in terms of ourUSP. We’re already started working in Japan and soon we're going to be in Korea and so that's definitely something that differentiates us from other music labels.We are an artist services company and we are a music label and essentially we believe that there is enough talent in India to create a sustainable music business economy. We really buy into that thesis. So I think that's what makes us different.We are not trying to compete with any of the major labels who have their own mandates, but we really believe in uplifting the independent artist and we really believe in the fact that there is a lot of value that is being undiscovered in India.

So talking about Japan, you have been working a lot with singers out there. How did it happen and what other projects are you working on there?

My visit to Japan happened in 2016 and when I was there, I just loved the place. So I was going back every twice or thrice a year. Then I decided, why not make music (there)? So, I started learning the language and around last year, we did some music for my second album ‘Industry 2’. The goal is to do a few singles every year and build a label there. One Mind in Japan is already in motion and we're doing a lot already. We're building a business out from scratch. So, it's still early days and our partners there have been very supportive. I’m very excited to see what we can do in the next few years.

I guess you learnt a bit of Japanese or can sing a song or two?

Oh yeah, I've learnt a lot of Japanese. Actually, I speak Japanese now quite conversationally. I've sung a couple of songs in Japanese as well. It’s a kind of bonding with the culture there and getting myself involved in it. I love everything about Japan. I don't know if I would live there ever, but I like the traditions. I like how this society is aligned with their values and how everything kind of just works there. It's a very big country and they have a lot of people. Tokyo is one of my favourite cities in the world. So, I love going there, love being there.

You also have a company One Mind Technologies, a tech arm with lawyer Priyanka Khimani. 

The name is no longer One Mind Technologies, it's now called Valid Tech, and it's not just me and Priyanka, it's me, Priyanka, Nitin and Parth.So Nitin Krishnamurthy is an ex-Google guy, he's also been with Antler, while Parth studied in School 42 in Paris. He's great with technology and he's building all our tech and basically our CTO. So we really are being very ambitious with our goals there. We're almost ready with our MVP and ready to go to market.

You released an album a year back ‘Industry2’ can you tell us something about it and how different it is compared to ‘Industry’ which you released in 2022.

‘Industry 2’ was the follow-up to ‘Industry I’ and the idea of ‘Industry 1’ was that we talk about the music industry and the challenges and the perils of it.  So that was the theme of ‘Industry 1’. ‘Industry 2’ was about taking that music industry and going abroad and going to Japan. So we had a song called India to Japan which was one of my favorite tracks on the album. ‘Industry 2’ was kind of like an overindulgent album in a way because I kind of overextended myself in my creative abilities a little bit. I was insistent that I kind of produce, write, compose everything on that album, which I think was a mission without really a reasonable motivation. I'm going into my third album next year, so there's a lot of learning from these first two. They've been very different in terms of the zone and the genres and the second album was very indie, the first one was very commercial. The third album I'm still deciding what I want to do but I do want it to be the biggest album that I've ever made. There's no ceiling on what we can achieve on this one. So it's still in the works but we're looking at releasing it sometime in April next year.

Why did you decide to name your albums ‘Industry’?

I’ve been in the music industry for the past 17 – 18 years and it’s been a learning experience as  I’ve done everything under the sun, I’ve been a technician, a guitar player, an entrepreneur, an artist first in foremost but all these things have run parallel and so I’ve realized that its  very complex business, but most artists don’t understand the business, they don’t understand what they are signing for and that was what ‘Industry I’ was about, artists taking charge of their own destiny within this industry. So I was trying to embody the message in ‘Industry 2’ as I wanted to write, compose and produce all my songs on the album. So the message was like how in a vast ocean of possibilities, how does an artist take charge of his destiny and that’s why I named the album ‘Industry I’ and in the entire analogy, the whole ocean is an industry.

You have tried all genres of music from funk to hip-hop to rock and electronica, which do you feel suits you the best?

I am yet to discover.(Laughs) I have had hits in dance music, ballads, pop music, funky tracks. I am just kind of a victim of my own success. I am still figuring out what I like the most.

In one of the albums you have the song India To Japan with Japanese rapper Cyber Rui. Can you tell us something interesting about this song and why you named it such?  

It's literally on Japan because it's about my cross-over collaboration with Japan. Cyber Rui was a rapper that I kind of met just by chance when I was in Japan and I totally liked the vibe that she was kind of presenting. The song that I had was already so perfect for her. We put it together and we kind of released it and it did pretty well. I think it was the first ever Hindi - Japanese collaboration in history. We followed it up with the first ever Hindi Indian music video shot in Japan in that same album. So, it was all about Japan. The second album was all about Japan.

Which Indian artists have you collaborated with recently or planning to work with?

We just did a song called Make Up Your Mind which is a really cool track. It's a cross-collaboration between me, Fotty Seven and one of our producers at the label Nemo and an American artist called Edwin Honoret. My next song Unspoken, as part of the highly anticipated Nexa Music Season 3 was out in November 2024.

Interviewed by Verus Ferreira