Tag Archives: Mavrix update

BollySwar: 2011 – 2020 is now available

As you may be aware, four volumes of the BollySwar e-book have been released so far – BollySwar: 1971 – 1980 (Volume 5), BollySwar: 1981 – 1990 (Volume 6), BollySwar: 1991 – 2000 (Volume 7), and BollySwar: 2001 – 2010 (Volume 8).

I am happy to inform you that the new volume – BollySwar: 2011 – 2020 (Volume 9) – is now available on Amazon.

This volume has been, by far, the most challenging yet. While working on the previous volumes, one of the main challenges was the difficulty in getting information about the films and songs of those decades. The problem while working on this volume was that – thanks to the age of the internet and social media – there was too much information available! It took more than a year to sift through all this information and make sense of it.

If you appreciate our work on MySwar, please do consider buying this book and the previous volumes. The BollySwar book series has information available on MySwar and a lot more (trivia, trends, milestones, stats, etc) – information you can now access offline. Each purchase goes a long way in keeping MySwar up and running. I would love to hear your thoughts on the book if you purchase it.

Links for BollySwar: 2011 – 2020 (Volume 9):
Amazon India
Amazon US
Amazon UK

(The e-book is available in Amazon stores of other countries as well – just search for BollySwar. You can read the e-book on a Kindle device or on the Kindle app available on various platforms.)

Change in MySwar domain – Again

About two years ago, we had had to shift the domain of MySwar from .com to .in due to ISP-level blocks on our website, which was most likely the result of a court order secured by an entity citing copyright infringement. We’re dismayed that our .in domain has also been blocked now and we have now shifted to http://myswar.co.

The process of blocking websites through ISPs, using court orders backed by Section 169A of the IT Act, 2008, is arbitrary and opaque. Affected websites are not informed about the block in advance, there is no scope for appeal ahead of the block, and the blocked websites are not told the reason for the block or the entity that got the court order.

Along with this shift of domain, we have removed the feature to listen to previews of songs. This is the only feature on MySwar that allows users to listen to music (30-second preview clips) directly on our website. We provide this feature using a widget provided by Apple to its music affiliates and these clips reside on Apple’s servers. However, it is possible that these links are being construed as copyright infringement. We hope that removing the preview links will ensure that MySwar does not get wrongly identified by labels for ISP blocks.

Thanks for staying with us.

MySwar References

One of the things we love on MySwar is the trivia – the story behind the music and the musicians. We source the trivia from books we read and from the World Wide Web. While we stored these source references, we didn’t have a way to show them to our users. Not anymore. We just rolled out the display of references from which we derive these trivia. Now, you will see a reference link next to trivia items (where applicable). Book references are listed together on one page and other references are listed right there on the song or album page.

Special mention must be made of the Hindi Film Geet Kosh compiled by Mr. Harmandir Singh ‘Hamraaz’. The Hindi Film Geet Kosh, a collection of 5 book volumes cataloguing Hindi films from 1931 to 1980, is not just the source of trivia for MySwar but also the foundation of our data from this period. It’s not a coincidence that it’s listed at the top in our list of references.

1930s Hindi Film Music – Now Available on MySwar

We had promised in February to complete the task of cataloguing the first decade of Hindi film music, starting with “Alam Ara” (1931), by April. We’re happy to report that the task is done right on time. MySwar now lists all the films released between 1931 and 1940 and their songs.

At this point, the data for film names, song listings and music related credits is complete to the extent that we have information for them. We have updated credits for directors, actors, banners for some of the films but this remains a work in progress. The task of linking to YouTube and iTunes (where available) is also in progress.

We hope you find this effort useful and invite any feedback you may have.

MySwar Updates

We’ve been busy making MySwar better these past few months and although we’re far from done, it’s a good time to review two of these updates:

  1. A few months ago, we started entering information for Hindi films released between 1931 and 1940. In a first pass, we entered the most important films released in this decade – films like “Alam Ara” (1931), “Devdas” (1935) and “Street Singer” (1938). In a second pass, we started filling in information for the remaining films. As of now, we’re done with the filmography for the period 1931 to 1936. Work on the period 1937 and 1940 is currently in progress. We expect this work to be done by April.
  2. MySwar now provides listing of albums by Label and listings of films by Banner/Production house. Labels displayed on album listing pages and on album pages are now hyperlinked. So is the Production company displayed on the album page. One cool thing about these listings are that we have linked related labels and production houses to provide a consolidated listing. For example, Polydor and Music India labels were merged into Universal and so clicking on either of the three gives the same consolidated listing. Same for NFDC and National Film Development Corporation Of India.

Please check out these updates and share any feedback you may have.

MySwar Mobile Web Version Now Available

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Over the last few weeks, we rolled out mobile web updates to the MySwar website. When you access myswar.co from a mobile device, you’ll see an easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly version. Almost every feature available available on the desktop website is available in the mobile web version. While the UI is different, the flow is very similar to the flow of the desktop website. The mobile website is intuitive but do take time out the check out the feature-rich, context-sensitive Settings option. Depending on what page you are in, the Settings pop-up provides you options to do various things including starting a playlist, filtering lists, logging in, changing the display language and switching to the destop UI. We hope you enjoy this update.

MySwar App Now Available In Hindi

Updated on Mar 12, 2015: The MySwar Android app is also available in Hindi now.

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A little more than a year ago, we had announced the availability of content on MySwar in Hindi in addition to English. We finally got to roll out an update that makes Hindi content available on the MySwar iOS app and the MySwar Android app as well.

Pretty much all content on the app, artist bios and trivia being exceptions, is now available in Hindi. Just go to Settings -> Language -> Choose “हिन्दी में” and Voila! As in the website, regardless of the Language setting in the app, you can search for songs/albums/artists by typing in either English or Devanagari.

Here’s a quick view of how the language setting works:

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2014 Bollywood Music Review

2014

2014 was not a great year for Hindi film music. The Indian Express carried a bleak piece discussing the death of Hindi film music in 2014. We have observed the rise of multi-composer albums and albums riding on one or two item songs for a few years now. This trend continued in 2014. The other thing that happened in 2014 was that there were fewer solid, single-composer albums to offset the mediocre ones. For example, while 2014 had only Queen, Haider and Highway as the hit-the-ball-out-of-the-park albums, 2013 had Lootera, Kai Po Che, Raanjhana, Aashiqui 2, Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani, Bhaag Milka Bhaag and D-Day.

Moving on, to digging deeper into the year. 2014 saw the release of 142 films with 982 songs between them.

The year saw the passing away of Chandrashekhar Gadgil, Juthika Roy, Raghunath Seth and Sitara Devi. It also saw influx of new talent. Some of the notable debuts of 2014 were:

The most prolific composers in 2014 were:

  1. A.R. Rahman – 7 films, 68 songs
  2. Himesh Reshammiya – 4 films, 46 songs
  3. Shankar – Ehsaan – Loy – 4 films, 24 songs
  4. Vishal – Shekhar – 3 films, 24 songs

Since Rahman’s list includes 2 Hollywood films (“Million Dollar Arm” and “The Hundred-Foot Journey”) and 3 Tamil films dubbed in Hindi (“Kochadaiiyaan”, “Lingaa” and “I”), we have included 4 composers in this list instead of the usual 3.

The most prolific lyricists in 2014 were:

  1. Kumaar – 22 films, 60 songs
  2. Irshad Kamil – 9 films, 55 songs
  3. Amitabh Bhattacharya – 8 films, 39 songs

Kumaar tops the lyricist list again. As we had mentioned last year, the disconnect between how much he gets talked about and the volume of his work output is stark. Other than Irshad Kamil and Amitabh Bhattacharya switching spots, this list is the same as last year’s. The stability of this list gives us an indication of how much value Bollywood places on these three lyricists.

The most prolific male singers of 2014 were:

  1. Arijit Singh – 62 songs
  2. Mika Singh – 37 songs
  3. Himesh Reshammiya – 22 songs

If 2013, with Aashiqui 2, was Arijit Singh’s breakout year, 2014 was the year he established his dominance. With 62 songs, he ruled the charts and the airwaves. Despite murmurs of “over-exposure”, Arijit has managed to appeal to both the masses and the critics. Mika Singh’s presence on this list shows Bollywood’s continued and, for us, inexplicable, fascination for his voice and/or the genre he represents. Singer Himesh Reshammiya can thank music director Himesh Reshammiya for all the songs he got to sing in 2014.

The most prolific female singers of 2014 were:

  1. Neeti Mohan – 42 songs
  2. Shreya Ghoshal – 32 songs
  3. Shalmali Kholgade – 21 songs

The careers of Neeti Mohan and Shalmali Kholgade continue to be on the rise and deservedly so. Shreya Ghoshal is still placed comfortably although she seems to have lost a bit of her sheen. It is very clear that Sunidhi Chauhan is getting fewer offers, although, as you’ll see below, the songs she does sing are well-liked.

Finally, based on a combination of ratings and number of well-rated songs in 2014, the most popular artists of 2014 were:

  1. Most popular composers: A.R. Rahman, Shankar – Ehsaan – Loy, Vishal – Shekhar, Pritam
  2. Most popular lyricists: Amitabh Bhattacharya, Gulzar, Irshad Kamil
  3. Most popular male singers: Arijit Singh, Vishal Dadlani, Papon
  4. Most popular female singers: Shreya Ghoshal, Neeti Mohan, Sunidhi Chauhan

Non-Film Albums Now Available On MySwar App

So far we had only Hindi film albums available on the MySwar app. Over the weekend, we rolled out an update that makes non-film albums also available. This means that the best works of artists like Jagjit Singh, Indian Ocean, Shubha Mudgal, Raghu Dixit, Swarathma and Vasuda Sharma are now available on our app. It also means that we get to see another dimension of popular film artists like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Manna Dey, Mohammed Rafi and Talat Mahmood.

We hope you enjoy this update: Android, iOS.

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Film Credits On MySwar

Since MySwar launched 2011, we have steadfastly focused on crediting musicians making Hindi film music – music directors, lyricists, singers and when the information was available, arrangers, assistants, instrumentalists and so on. We believe that musician credits is a sadly overlooked aspect of music metadata in India. That is the reason you didn’t see any credits for the film cast and crew all this time. While we continue to hold that belief, we believe we have made a significant contribution in cataloguing comprehensive and accurate musician credits and it’s now time to start adding other film credits as well.

A few weeks ago we started showing credits for the film crew – specifically Director, Producer, Writer (Story, Dialogue, Screenplay), Cast and Studio. So far we have credits for over 1500 films and you should be able to find complete filmographies of the superstars – Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan – and the major directors – Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Gulzar, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Manmohan Desai, Nasir Hussain, Shakti Samanta, Subhash Ghai, Vishal Bhardwaj, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Yash Chopra, among others. This remains a work in progress effort as we continue to add film credits for other films based on priority decided by the film’s significance and the significance of the film’s cast and crew.

This additional information is available on the website in the album page as well as in the app in the additional information screen for albums. On the website, this information is available in Hindi as well English.

Sholay

One of the challenges we faced in this project is reconciling artists with same or similar names. For example, while Nasir Hussain (नासिर हुसैन) is the producer/director behind films like “Teesri Manzil” (1966), “Yaadon Ki Baarat” (1973) and “Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak” (1988); Nazir Hussain (नज़ीर हुसैन) is the actor known for his role in films like “Devdas” (1955), “Kashmir Ki Kali” (1964), “Jewel Thief” (1967) and “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977). We have tried our best to ensure proper credits by using the primary source where we could – the credits in the film itself – as well as a number of other sources including the venerable Hindi Film Geet Kosh. If, however, you find mistakes, please do let us know and we’ll fix it.

In addition to regular search and display, you can also use Advanced Search to find songs that include actor/producer/director/writer/studio parameters. The results from these searches are indicative since – a) we don’t have all the films covered yet for these new credit attributes, b) the credits are at the film level, not the song level (relevant specially for actors).

I hope you like this new facet of MySwar and enjoy the delicious nuggets of information it offers.