Junior Arya Sarukkai remembers opening up his YouTube channel AryaMusic every day in sixth grade to check the view counts on music visualizers he had created for songs from emerging artists. Back then, he considered even 500 views as “going viral” — but now, with a million monthly listeners on Spotify, his definition of going viral has completely changed.
Today, under the moniker AryaMusic, he has over 5 million streams on one of his most popular songs “Unforgettable” — a remake of a song by Pnb Rock.
Sarukkai first found inspiration through music channels like Trap Nation and Bass Nation that created visualizers — animated graphics for music that are synchronized with the rhythm and frequency of songs — for songs on the internet.
Upon starting his channel AryaMusic in 2021, Sarrukkai focused on creating music promotion videos. He spent time working with emerging artists like CRØWN and F1R3 to create promotional music visualizers for their songs using software such as Adobe After Effects.
Through his experiences on his YouTube channel and work with these artists, he became involved in many artist communities and learned how to start producing his own music.
“I met a few friends who taught me to learn how to promote music and produce music myself,” Sarukkai said.
Now, AryaMusic is more than just a music promotion channel with visualizers for songs. Although he doesn’t produce any vocals, Sarukkai created a music label called AMM Ventures where he produces, licences, remixes and remakes other songs while also helping small artists license and promote their songs.
He added, “I really enjoy working on remixes because I take an amazing song and give it my own unique spin. In fact, my favorite song that I produced is one that I never released; it’s a remake of an unreleased song by The Weeknd called ‘Come Through.’”
Through his experiences, Sarukkai has acquired a deeper knowledge of the music industry. He has learned how to licence viral songs on TikTok and Instagram to get them on Spotify without violating copyright laws.
“In the recent year, I’ve become very well versed in sample clearance, music licensing and other copyright laws that are really important in terms of publishing and monetizing remixes and reworks of songs on streaming platforms like Spotify,” Sarukkai said.
In addition to his producing work Sarukkai has experimented with creating his own songs from scratch using AI vocals. Sarukkai started using Audimee.com to generate vocals for his original songs, but quickly found that these vocals were not processed enough to be released. In turn, he learned how to process and master these vocals in a manner that captures his distinctive style and gives the songs a chance to gain traction on streaming services.
Asked about his plans, he said, “[Even though] I don’t plan to pursue music as a career, I really enjoy it and would like to keep it as a hobby in the future.”
