Anara Publishing’s 2021 Round Up

It’s hard to believe that once again it’s time for me to write our end of year round up blog. 2021 in many ways was similar to 2020. Whilst we found ourselves still going through the pandemic and its various restrictions, both the Anara team and our roster of songwriters were able to take advantage of many new opportunities. It’s been a year of positivity and growth and it really has been a pleasure to look back upon our highlights to put together this blog.

We welcomed three new members to the Anara Publishing team in 2021 as we continue to expand and find new opportunities for our roster. Deepa joined us as Head of Business Development in India whilst here in the UK we welcomed Publishing Assistants Punam and Bethany. All three have really hit the ground running by getting stuck into projects like sync pitching, social media campaigns and our songwriting camps and are an integral part of our day-to-day business operations. I thank them and Jagoda, who was also promoted to Head of A&R and Sync at the beginning of 2021, for being such a dedicated and wonderful team to work with.

Events & Workshops

Whilst we weren’t able to travel as much as we anticipated this year, we were still able to make the most out of attending virtual conferences like SXSW, Aim Sync, All About Music and MIDEM Digital. When restrictions were slightly lifted, we were lucky enough to attend a couple of in-person events like Liverpool Sound City, MAMA Festival and Tak Brzmi Miasto.

To try and stay as connected to you all as possible, we launched a series of “Music Publishing Simplified” Instagram Live educational sessions with our sister company Horus Music India. We’re looking forward to bringing these back in 2022, amongst other things.

Growing the Roster

We signed 10 incredible artists in 2021. Here in the UK, we brought onboard Georgia Black and The Cheerful. In India, we welcomed Aseem, Samar Mehdi, Piyush Bhisekar and Saachi. Elsewhere, Simön joined us from Uruguay and we made our first Polish signing since Jagoda relocated there last year as we welcomed DORRR in December.

We made exciting steps into a new market, making our first signing in Nigeria in AJIMOVOIX in collaboration with Horus Music Nigeria. We also announced our partnership with Project Asteri, an LA based artist management and record label to represent their artists in the UK.

We asked every member of the team to pick their favourite songs that were added to the Anara Publishing catalogue in 2021:

Deepa

• DO/DON’T – Saachi
• Tu Hai Wajah – Piyush Bhisekar
• Khwab – Hrishikesh Datar

Sync Successes

Our catalogue has landed a number of great placements this year, including:

• “Underscore” by KAVYA was used by Apple in their Instagram campaign for Diwali in November.
• “Make It Happen” and “Foresight” by Tejas were featured in Netflix Series ‘The Big Day’.
• Brandon’s track “Arcade” was licensed for a video game trailer by Austrian agency Tunnel23.
• Swarathma’s “Mushkil Mein Jeena” was featured in Al Jazeera’s news programme “Context India”.

India

Our work in India has really accelerated in 2021. Alongside the sync news and new signings we have made, we are now officially members of IPRS. This makes us one of their first ever members with a HQ outside of India, which is a monumental first step in order to ensure that our writers can collect their performance and mechanical royalties in the region.

We ran our first India Songwriting Camp in August, partnering with a local management company to write a song for one of their artists. More details on this will be announced soon! We have a number of other exciting collaborations in India currently in the works which we look forward to sharing too.

Wishing you all a wonderful festive period – here’s to a happy and healthy 2022 with continued growth and even more successes.