The power of music is incomparable, but making it as a musician is often a lonely, difficult road.
Sound Scope is a concert production and content platform that focuses on strengthening the reach of new musical talent online. Sound Scope Founder Tilanka Jayamanne shared that Sound Scope was founded in 2018 to support musicians with opportunities on a promotional level, help them find gigs, and so on.
“I wasn’t a serious musician till I was about 27,” Jayamanne explained. “I have a law background and I was working at a business when I decided to leave and start my own thing. Sound Scope came through as a special media platform where we wanted to create quality content and then get into venue management. We currently handle entertainment at The Shangri-La Hotel Colombo and are hoping to get into more venues and even more concert productions as well.”
Jayamanne, whose primary instrument is the flute, is a classically trained musician, learning under Sureka Amarasinghe and going on to secure a scholarship for free music tuition while majoring in a law degree at the University of Warwick. Jayamanne has performed as a soloist with the Sri Lanka Symphonic Orchestra twice and has also performed at the World Flute Festival in India. Jayamanne held his first solo recital at 15, followed by two further recitals in his early 20s.
Despite his classical training, Jayamanne has experimented with other genres of music in his career. “My preferred genre would be R&B and jazz,” Jayamanne said. “I like classical music, but R&B and jazz is where my heart is. On a personal level, I feel this is a genre all musicians in the classical can branch into as well and break barriers. Hopefully, this is something Sound Scope can convince people to do.”
Going virtual in 2020
In 2020, which has been an exceedingly tough year for the arts, Sound Scope has taken note of what the virtual has to offer while still understanding the importance of live performance, managing to successfully host Beyond The Song, a concert that took place between lockdowns this year, and incidentally, was the only concert to be hosted at the Bishop’s College Auditorium this year.
Sound Scope also took their annual Christmas concert “Christmas is Here” virtual this year with a series of five music videos, all of which were live performances. “All our music videos are shot live,” Jayamanne explained, adding: “It’s something that’s very important to Sound Scope, to be able to produce raw and authentic content. What you see is what you hear. You see all the mics and the equipment; it helps to capture the integrity of making the music.”
“Christmas is Here: Live in the Studio” came together with the support of several partnerships including Hatch as ecosystem partner and video production handled by one of Sound Scope’s long-term partners Magnet Studios who lends high production value to the video series.
“Christmas is Here: Live in the Studio” featured 18 musicians who came on board the project for the love of performing. “It was great to work with and welcome these fantastic musicians to perform on our platform. The production was very rewarding and I’m happy to have been able to coordinate with many sponsors and partners who believed in us as well. We’re looking forward to having even more productions similar to this going forward to continue giving musicians this unique platform to express thesmselves.”
The future
Speaking on musicians going virtual in the long term, Jayamanne shared that with spaces like Sound Scope, aspects like taking care of video production and mixing sound can be handled, but there is still a gap in revenue models. Corporate sponsorships, while invaluable, only go so far toward covering costs, and ticket sales are an important part of revenue models for performers.
Jayamanne explained that there is a real need for digital solutions to be developed in the long term to be able to throw concerts online, particularly in Sri Lanka, where virtual concerts have not caught on and where ticketing systems for the virtual concerts that do take place are not secure.
“What we wish is that a tech company could develop something similar to Netflix for music where a user pays a one-time fee to view content on that device. This would actually boost the musicians who are struggling right now; the ones who don’t have gigs and whose supporters can’t see them.
“Even if there’s a band with a loyal customer base, instead of sending out Zoom links (which can be shared with other people who haven’t purchased it), it would be great if telecom companies or whoever made a system where users get a one-time access pass. Tickets, or access passes, could then be sold around the country and even internationally, as opposed to just Colombo. This is something I hope tech will eventually be able to provide musicians in Sri Lanka.”
Jayamanne also shared that going forward, platforms like Sound Scope producing content that engages with the public with corporate support are one-way musicians can contribute to keeping the industry going. “With Sound Scope itself, we’re relatively new, but we’ve established a lot of good links with good musicians, and hopefully brands and musicians will trust us and as we move forward, we’ll be able to do good for the music industry. We really want to unearth some new talent and are taking initiatives in the next year in relation to that,” Jayamanne said. “Hopefully Covid-19 won’t be a huge barrier. I do hope that someone takes the plunge and develops a digital solution that allows for ticket sales per device. In 2021, a lot of musicians would use such an opportunity to make up for the amount of lost revenue in 2020.”
