Filmi

Filmi ("of films") music soundtracks are produced for India's mainstream motion picture industry and written and performed for Indian cinema. In cinema, music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by playback singers and the genre represents 72% of the music sales market in India.Filmi music tends to have appeal across India, Nepal and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the target audience, for example in Hindi or Tamil. Playback singers are usually more noted for their ability to sing rather than their charisma as performers. Filmi playback singers level of success and appeal is tied to their involvement with film soundtracks of cinema releases with the highest box office ratings. At the "Filmi Melody: Song and Dance in Indian Cinema" archive presentation at UCLA, filmi was praised as a generally more fitting term for the tradition than 'Bombay melody' " suggesting that the exuberant music and melodrama so closely identified with the Hindi commercial cinema produced in Bombay (Mumbai) is truly pan-Indian."