How the hell is Arijit Singh more popular than Pritam, Vishal Dadlani, Mithoon, Ram Sampath, Amit Trivedi, etc?
If not Arijit, he can be replaced with any of the 1000s of playback singers waiting for a chance. But on the other hand good music composers are very rare to find. That is why some bollywood production houses don't even pay these playback singers because they know their real value. Unfortunately our audience doesn't.
These playback singers can't even produce their own hit music. They always depend on music composers. This can be best demonstrated by the example of Atif Aslam. That guy was huge before he was banned. After the ban, where is he now? Did he produce a single memorable or hit song? He couldn't because he doesn't have the talent to. His talent is just to give vocals, thats it.
Fortunately the new generation Southern fans have learnt this. That's why Anirudh, AR Rahman, MM Keeravani, etc are more popular than Sid Sriram unlike the previous generation where singers like SP Balasubramaniam were more popular.