Sameer Gadhia Of YTG On, ‘Point Of Origin,’ Approach To Business Side

Over the course of nearly fifteen years and five studio albums, California alternative act Young the Giant has landed one record in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart and three in the top 40, tallying one gold album and two platinum singles to go with over a billion streams on Spotfiy alone.

Singer and mutli-instrumentalist Sameer Gadhia is a first-generation American whose parents left Ahmadabad, India first for Michigan and eventually California in the 1980s, where he gravitated to music from a young age, eventually forgoing his studies in Human Biology at Stanford University to pursue it full time.

As an Indian American artist forming a musical identity in the world of alternative music, his path is unique, with Young the Giant touching upon subjects like the immigrant experience in America on albums like 2016’s Home of the Strange and their latest studio effort American Bollywood, an album in four parts.

Incorporating his own experiences within his music, Gadhia has long been an advocate for greater cultural diversity, drilling down on the idea in “Point of Origin,” a series which runs on SiriusXM’s Alt Nation.

In partnership with the satellite radio broadcaster, Gadhia personally curates and hosts the series, highlighting an artist during each session with SiriusXM adding a track from that artist into rotation on Alt Nation (channel 36).

Coinciding with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the latest season of “Point of Origin” debuted in May, highlighting the music of Rahill. Singer of New York garage rockers Habibi, Rahill’s first solo album incorporates the sounds of her Iranian heritage. The current session features Cameroonian-American electro pop artist and producer Vagabon, with the series set to spotlight Indian alternative group The F16s starting in July.

“I had been wanting to feature her for a while,” said Gadhia of Vagabon last week, backstage in Chicago prior to a performance alongside Milky Chance and TALK at Huntington Bank Pavilion. “She had kind of been around the space with a lot of different artists that I haven’t had the chance to highlight yet – like Sasami Ashworth. So it was kind of a making that was bound to happen at some point,” he said, noting the manner in which “Point of Origin” has celebrated voices of color since 2020.

“The F16s are an amazing band from Chennai in India. When I’ve had the privilege to go over there and tour there, and also just be there with my family, I’ve been privy to this really large underground scene of English speaking and performing artists that is happening,” Gadhia continued. “They were artists that a bunch of my friends who were in the scene had started talking to me about. I started listening to their music and I thought it was the perfect fit. So it’s really exciting to feature them for July.”

I spoke with Sameer Gadhia about highlighting a diverse roster of artists and changing the alternative narrative via SiriusXM’s “Point of Origin,” the economics of touring, finally owning some of his own masters, the importance of keeping a keen eye on the business side, Young the Giant’s new acoustic EP Both Sides and their latest single “The Walk Home.” A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.

Jim Ryan: What was your initial goal for “Point of Origin?”

Sameer Gadhia: I wanted to be able to seek out other artists, especially in the alternative space, who kind of were more along the lines of the experience that I had had. Because, for the most part, I kind of see myself as a bit of an outsider from kind of the norm of the artists I had made friends with – who I still love and who are great people. But I just wanted to see that.

That kind of evolved immediately into just wanting to be able to retell the narrative of what alternative music is – the history and the genesis of it being a highly collaborative, highly inspirational place that draws inspiration from every genre and every country and every language and every rhythm – and kind of try to change the misnomer that people think of alternative music as predominantly straight, white male.

So that was kind of the goal. And I do think that “Point of Origin” has been able to change it – even if ever so slightly. So it’s been a really, really great thing.

Ryan: What’s it been like partnering with SiriusXM and Alt Nation on it?

Gadhia: They’ve been really great. It was an idea that was brewing internally within me and my team. I had been starting to do some college speaking events and talking to kids and mentoring kids. And so it just was the perfect fit. Because I think it was, potentially, something that Alt Nation was looking for. And it just matched up really nicely.

Regan over at Alt Nation has been so supportive of the platform. They kind of allow me and my team to find the artists. And at this point, just with the general click of music, there are certain artists who are already in the ether – certain artists people have been talking about already. And they’ve been really open to it.

It’s artist-friendly and artist-facing. And there have been a few instances in which I think a song had charted and started to do something without anybody really knowing that it would. And I think that’s the beauty of a curative space for radio.

Ryan: How has this tour gone so far with Milky Chance? It’s a fun bill with some really interesting openers as well in TALK and Rosa Linn…

Gadhia: This tour has been great so far. TALK has been a really amazing opening act. And I’m really excited for Rosa Linn in the second half. That’s going to be really great.

I think there’s also, still, an inherent disconnect and paradox when it comes to the world of booking and touring that I hope that “Point of Origin” can start help figuring out. Which is wanting to have more artists who have the ability – and have had enough hours to perform and have good performances – paid enough to be able to tour. To be worthy of being on a tour of this caliber, it’s a difficult thing.

Touring is a very difficult space right now. I’m excited for the future of what we do – and potentially even trying to build a music festival with Young the Giant and trying to use the tenets and cores of “Point of Origin” to make that more available for a larger array of artists.

Ryan: You and I spoke at Lollapalooza a few years ago and touched on your forward thinking approach to the business side. And now you’ve mentioned the idea of curating a festival. In an era like this where it’s been hard to monetize recorded music now for quite a while, and it is getting more difficult to tour, just how important is it to keep a closer eye on that business side?

Gadhia: Oh, it’s so much more important.

There’s a lot of money to be had. That’s the crazy thing. And, as you know, it’s just not coming to the artists. It still isn’t coming to the artists. So, unfortunately, you have to figure out ways to have passive income coming in.

None of that is an overnight thing. All of it is going to be building and working toward something. And there’s this paradox where you need to pay the bills – but you need to spend hundreds of hours on this other project that may eventually pay the bills. But you still need to pay them now.

We’re very fortunate, obviously, that we have such a robust touring base and we can tour like this. It’s been four years and this is our best selling tour that we’ve ever had so far. And we’re excited to continue to grow that.

So there’s a part of me that loves touring – I really do. On the basis of principle alone, however, I don’t feel like it’s great for artists to take all of the risk and feel like the majority of their income is coming from touring, you know?

Ryan: When we spoke previously, you stressed the importance for younger artists in owning their masters – which, being signed to a label, was obviously more difficult for Young the Giant to achieve. But you released the American Bollywood album independently, right? So do you own them now?

Gadhia: We did. We released it independently. We released it with a distro called AWAL.

And I truly do believe that. I think it’s a long game though. And it’s something that is an uphill battle. It’s not a perfect solution. There is no perfect solution right now.

But we do, yes. Our deal with AWAL for this record is a licensing deal. So it’s literally only this record and it’s only for five years. At that point we can re-sign or we can change.

The future of distribution is so murky. As major labels are just kind of gobbling up these distro companies, they’re starting to look essentially just more like labels – but more tightfisted with their money. It doesn’t necessarily work for certain artists.

So I don’t fault young artists who are wanting to go and try to be superstars. Because it does happen and it can work. And the infrastructure of a major label still is unparalleled, I think, to that of any distro that’s out there.

Ryan: You guys recorded the new Both Sides EP at Sunset Sound. I think in this era where it’s become so easy to record at home, people forget what kind of an impact a great studio can have. What’s it been like for you guys historically recording there?

Gadhia: It’s a beautiful place for us. We’ve done so many of our records there – even little portions. The first record we did almost entirely at Sunset Sound. And that was a completely different generation of music.

I mean, it’s not like we’ve been around forever but we were at the tail end of really the analog experience where it was like, you do go into a proper studio and you work with professionals who are trained to do what they do and you trust in their skill and their desire to make something great. And we still want to be able to support businesses like that. And we do still feel like there’s something important to that.

That being said, it comes from a place of privilege. There are not very many artists who can afford to do that. And I know that these studios are trying to become a little bit more available and approachable for younger artists – just for their own survival as well. And we’ll see kind of where that goes – if it goes anywhere.

Ryan: With “The Walk Home,” you guys kind of pulled back the curtain a bit in terms of letting people see the way a song can evolve. There’s three really unique versions of it out there now. What made you want to showcase that song in that way?

Gadhia: I think inherently, for us, there’s always an acoustic element that is a through line throughout our whole discography. So, in the open versions, we do acoustic versions of our songs.

It’s not necessarily always a business decision but this time, now, being able to control the narrative – being able to have these masters and being able to get people different ways to listen to it? I think we would’ve done these versions anyway. So it’s just exciting that we put it on a record and were able to play with amazing musicians. And I think we’re seeing the impact of that song now.