13th August 2022 – It was the last day of the 5 day-long seminar week held at St. Paul’s Institute of Communication Education from 8th to 13th August and the theme of focus for today’s session was Music and Entertainment. Mr. Rajat Chandra, Manager – Synching & Licensing at Sony Music publishing was invited as a guest of honor to speak and throw light on the theme from his experiences of a career spanning almost 6 years. Mr. Chandra started off with a speech of greeting to the students present and then went ahead with giving a brief introduction of himself and his accomplishments in the industry.
Mr. Chandra in the session talked about a few important industry-related concepts such as the Business of Intellectual Property (IP) and various processes involved in it. He provided an insightful detail of information on IP and both the industry and customer point of view involved in the process and tried to explain the interrelation between the creator, producer, and media in an engaging manner by giving examples of case studies such as the Bollywood movie Gehraaiyan, the popular K-pop BTS music Butter and, Harry Potter the widely popular fantasy novel by the American author JK Rowling.
Mr. Rajat then further proceeded by speaking about the concept of Authorship vs Ownership, which is a very crucial part of the entertainment business industry and also explained the process of transferring IP ownership. The session went ahead with Mr. Chandra speaking about the flow of entertainment and various steps involved in the process such as ideation, concept development, funding, and other resources, finalizing partners and promoters, production, post-production, packaging, marketing and distribution, and monetization. He also spoke about a few global brands such as Netflix Originals, Ubisoft, Sony Entertainment Television, Sony Music Publishing, and many more as an example of those involved in the entertainment business sector.
Mr. Chandra also shared with the students a bit about his journey in the industry and the errors he made and learned from being a student of Applied Psychology to starting his career as a booking agent at TM Talent Management followed by the role of marketing, artist, and label relations officer at Hungama Music and then as a content acquisition officer at Showbox, IN10 Media and then landing upon his current job as a Manager – Synching & Licensing at Sony music.
The session ended with Mr. Chandra giving a few tips for a successful career in the industry such as thinking big, communicating effectively, working on both soft and hard skills, networking, being a good problem solver and being supportive and nice to people, growing a personal brand and maintain a sense of direction, etc.Overall, it was a wonderful session loaded with information where the guest of honor tried to give a macro view of the entertainment business and had a lot for the students to learn from as future media professionals.