After doing a lot of commercial music, singer Jubin Nautiyal has now decided to “work independently” on the kind of music that empowers him. And the first step in this direction is a cinematic album and musical feature film, Tum Aaye Ho Toh, which he was working on for the last five years.

“From day one, my plan was to do a lot of commercial work, create a fanbase and then move to independent music. Now that I have so many people who love me and my music, I felt it was the right time to take that step,” the singer — credited with songs including Tum Hi Aana (Marjaavaan; 2019), Raataan Lambiyan (Shershaah; 2021) and Manike (Thank God; 2022) — tells us.

Not involving any labels in this initiative, Nautiyal says, was the “best part” as it gave him the chance to take charge of things. He explains, “The person putting in the money is in charge. With an album like this, I didn’t want to be tied down in any way, where somebody is telling me what to do. Moreover, had there been a label involved, it would have become an ordinary thing. And this isn’t ordinary music for me, hence it had to be presented like that.”

The 34-year-old goes on to elaborate on his decision to not treat his upcoming work as any other “ordinary” album: “Too many songs are being released through labels these days. I didn’t want my album to be lost in this crowd of songs. Main chahta tha ki woh exclusivity factor rahe.”

The video of each song in the album has a story to tell, and when clubbed together, makes for an hour-long musical feature film with dialogues.

“After the success of Humnava, Rocky (of the composer duo Rocky-Shiv) and I came together to create infinite number of songs over a period of five years. We pulled out six songs, which, when clubbed together, would make a perfect story. We are releasing the music soon and are trying to send the film for film festivals as it’s a beautifully shot piece of art. It has never happened before that a musical feature film made for an album has been sent to film festivals,” shares Nautiyal.