Armaan Malik reacts to the ‘politics’ he has observed in Bollywood

Singer Armaan Malik opened up about the ‘politics’ that he has observed in Bollywood and said that he has decided to step away from the industry for various reasons. He said that singers in Bollywood have accepted that they won’t get paid for their work, which is unfair and revealed that they are often replaced on projects for vague reasons.

In an appearance on Raj Shamani’s podcast, Armaan said that after being replaced multiple times, he was scarred: “That phase, where I was being replaced, I thought, ‘To hell with this mess’.” Armaan said that he decided to give it all up and focus on his own music after spending some months in New Zealand and detoxing.

“There was a phase where I was replaced in quite a few songs in Bollywood, which scarred me in a way. I was like, ‘Am I, not a good singer?’ And I can’t let that happen to me. I’m very sure of myself as a singer. But it’s the circumstances. If I’m replaced because I’ve not sung the song well, I’ll accept that. But if I’m replaced because of certain factors or politics, that’s unacceptable. That happened so much to me and still does, I’ll be frank. I moved on from that,” he added.

Uncovering more open secrets about Bollywood, he continued, “Singers don’t get paid to sing in movie songs. Obviously, you do certain things for the love of music, but there’s also monetary motivation. At the end of the day, think of it as a job. It’s crazy that, as singers, we don’t get to see that. We are so used to not being paid that it is not even a conversation. They feel that if the song is a hit, the singers will earn money through live shows. There’s no conversation. It’s just like, ‘Are you free to come to the studio?’ We come, we sing the song and the next day you find out someone else has sung the song. Sometimes, even composers don’t get paid. The streaming revenue goes to the labels. This could be a story that we’re uncovering here, but not many people know that their favourite artists are not being paid.”

Armaan hails from a family that has long been involved in film music, but he said that he avoided accepting this in public because he didn’t want to be asked uncomfortable questions.