Delhi's independent electronic scene, read through boxout.fm

Most portraits of Delhi's electronic music start with the clubs. The public record tells a sharper story through one community radio station, boxout.fm, because its ups and downs show how a scene pays for its own infrastructure. This piece uses only published sources; we did no interviews, and each source is dated.

From party to station

boxout.fm began as a party started by Mohammed Abood, who DJs as MoCity, according to Resident Advisor. Wikipedia dates its first broadcast to 7 April 2017, from Gulmohar Park in New Delhi, names Sahej Bakshi (Dualist Inquiry) as a co-founder, and describes a schedule running from 09:00 to 01:00 IST with about thirty resident DJs, the shows archived on Mixcloud.

Paying for it

The station leaned on its own community for money. In November 2021, months after the studio had closed (see below), Mixmag Asia reported a compilation series curated by residents, opening with SUCHI SELECTS from Suchi, host of the show "Through The Smog", with pre-orders on Bandcamp and proceeds going towards keeping boxout.fm running.

Losing the room

By then the studio was already gone. Mixmag reported in April 2022 that the station had closed its physical space in February 2021 and was ending broadcasts to run as a streaming site and "music discovery service". RA reported that new shows stopped in February 2022, and quoted radio manager Ayesha Dikshit: "The purpose of this shift is to highlight the incredible richness of the boxout.fm archive." The club night, Boxout Wednesdays, carried on, returning in March 2022 at a new venue, per RA.

Back on air, with a sponsor

The latest chapter is brand-funded. A shesaid.so project page lists boxout.fm under the Ballantine's True Music Fund x shesaid.so, backing a re-established HQ and studio for live radio and artist sessions, plus a daily YouTube morning show of music discovery, interviews and "underground storytelling". The page carries no date, so we cannot say when the studio reopens or whether it has.

What we think

First, the archive outlived the room. When the money ran short, boxout.fm kept the part that costs least to keep, its recorded shows, and the club night, the part that earns. For any small scene outlet, that ordering is the lesson: digitise early, because the studio is the first thing to go.

Second, the platform shift is visible in the comeback plan. The 2017 station ran a 16-hour daily radio schedule; the funded relaunch leads with a daily YouTube show. That reads to us as a station following its audience to video, not a return to 2017. It is our reading of one project page, not a measured trend.

Third, the money question has not gone away, it has moved. Bandcamp compilations from residents gave way to a spirits brand's fund. Sponsorship can rebuild a studio, but it is not the same as a scene paying for itself, and the record does not yet show how the new studio stays open once the grant is spent. We would like to see boxout.fm publish that plan.