Music space in India is growing year-on–year along with the expectation of artistes and business. Various brands that had invested their creative skills along with moolah have found promising results in the past. Brands like MTV that has invested their time and money over years have also received positive returns on a long-run. MTV has created content that appeals not only among audiences but also draws attention of sponsors. The much-awaited MTV property – Coke studio that is in its third season has also clicked strongly among the audiences and sponsors in last two seasons in spite being experimental in nature.
In a conversation with Radioandmusic.com, MTV India EVP and business head Aditya Swamy shares its promotion plans along with the understanding he derived from the last season of Coke studio@MTV.
Excerpts:
How you plan to promote the Coke studio@MTV?
We usually create 50 original songs and MTV holds the IP for it. We plan our marketing strategy based on the fact that we need to get more and more people to enjoy the music. Distribution is the key thing that we play on in order to get people hear the music so that they come back. The music goes across multiple platforms on MTV not just as a show, but stand-alone single song across various platforms. We have a product that is distributed in digital and physical form; you will have physical CD of the entire season available every year. We also license the music to various music sharing sites like iTunes, Nokia music store, Gaana and MTV Youtube channel. It plays on our website and through our telecom operators we will distribute it as a CRBT tones. Really, the idea that we are concentrating on is to get the music in multiple platforms as possible. This becomes our core marketing strategy is to pull audiences to listen to our music.
How was the line-up of artistes sorted?
It is the toughest job, as we have a wonderful range of musician in our country that is the real challenge. Unfortunately, we can make only eight episodes, I wish we could make 80. I think our main idea is to make the people come out from their comfort zone and try something new and experiment with traditional music in a contemporary modern form. Whether, it is Ram Sampath who is known to make some edgy music in India cinema today. Or there is king of music itself AR Rahman who is always re-defining the soundscape of India. Or the young and budding music talents Clinton Cerejo and Amit Trivedi who is making waves with their experimental sounds. We are looking at people who are keen to experiment, have multiple music influences and who are not afraid to venture into unknown. We found wonderful bunch of musician to work with. Apart from producers, we have 200 musicians who are part of Coke studio@MTV and over the years we have around 150 original songs and that been a real pleasure.
How you get on board the budding bands to perform at the show?
Lot of young bands has been writing to us, telling us to check their music and sending us requests to feature them on the show. Last time, we featured a young band called Agam. Post Coke studio, their music became popular and people started listening to them. It was only so much we could do with our network. We partnered with Blue frog for four Thursday in a month to get youth talents to perform at their ventures in Mumbai and Delhi; of all the young bands, we had to choose and force to make a decision of selecting one band that can feature on one of our episodes. It was a talent engagement platform where we can engage and find true kind of sound. We have zoned one band that will feature on our show as one of the participants of this season.
Like last year, why the show has different producers for all the episodes?
Last year also, we had the same model and I think this decision was made as the strength on the music fraternity in India. Staying by the facts there is a wide range of sounds in our landscape which can be captured by different music producers, as they have different take to single idea of the show. Everybody wants variety and today’s audiences don’t really want to go to speciality restaurant and eat only one kind of food. They wish to enjoy different cuisines. If you apply the same analogy to music then you will understand that this is a journey of music in India interpreted by eight different people in eight different forms. Variety is the spice of life.
Earlier, season was very successful and people enjoyed it because there was different take to various kinds of sounds. And this model worked really well for us. It represents the wide musical variety of India and the theme of Coke studio – variety and diversity- what better way to celebrate diversity then to have eight different people to produce the season. We are sticking to the core idea of celebrating diversity.
What are the challenges you’ll faced last year?
It is a highly specialized product to produce. The entire show is shot in HD camera and there are nine such cameras that are filming the entire thing. The entire sound editing is done by international sound engineer and lot of sound is mixed outside India and then gets mastered here. Today, the challenge is live music. Rarely, you have people recording music live as most of the recording happens when people come in their own time record and go. But here we are doing live recording as all the musicians are coming on board and recording the music. We capture the energy and process; this is the core of Coke studio. It is a challenging production in itself and mixing live sound is a challenge and you need to get it right. Getting all the musicians to capture their energy is something that adds to the music experience and we focus on this a lot. Logistically to get 200 people together to get 50 original sounds is a logistical nightmare. Talking to various artistes and co-coordinating their schedule and get them to
gether to rehearse-this has been a constant challenge. But if you do it with all your heart and passion then you will enjoy conquering the challenges. We got the dedicated music team who talk to musician, curate music, finding new songs and explore new collaboration. This makes the challenges worthwhile.
What are the few changes that would be noticed this season?
The core of the show remains the same. The idea is to present traditional music in a contemporary form so the core of this doesn’t change. You will see a different looking set, producers and we have created lot of behind the show material on how the music is actually made, how the song has been created and how the lyrics have been born. This gives a deeper insight into music. The core is same but the icing is different.
Which label will have the music rights of the show music?
We have always partnered with Sony music. We can only do the licensing deal once the entire music is ready so the licensing deal is yet to be closed. But for season one and two, we have partnered with Sony music.
How many digital and physical sales the music witnessed?
It is number one non-film selling album in the country and it’s a big statement to make and everybody should be proud of. The appetite is only growing more and more for music out here.
Will there be on-ground promotion activity for the show?
Like last year, we will have it this year too. We will do live concerts named Coke studio Live, by organising gigs from 500 to 5000 people to concerts covering 20,000 audiences. This year the large one that happened was at Jaipur Literature Festivals and Lovely University in Punjab. The idea is to create a show to take the live event on road and give people the real live experience of magic of Coke studio.
How was last year for MTV overall?
Response for most of our music initiatives was tremendous, both from our audience and sponsors. We started off doing Coke studio, followed by MTV Unplugged, then Sound tripping with HTC mobile and then Music Video awards were we tied up with Micromax. We are able to do more and more initiatives due to the support through various brands. These are actually becoming properties we can do year-on-year. We are building this as powerful sub-brands and advertisers are supporting it because they are aware that the large audiences are following the show. The audience will come only if you give them high quality content. I think it’s a circle that you put great quality content and you will have advertisers who will love to be a part of it.
All the show that is happening again and again is because we are re-establishing the core and that music is in our heart. Giving the fact that we have a large digital presence, it really helps us disseminate the content. Music is consumed largely digital and the youth of today are digitally wired that draws advertisers to us. Our digital advantage gives us lot of benefit in creating more and more music property. Digital is our life and we are doing a lot in digital space. Digital is integral to MTV.
AR Rahman was never on television but for past one year he has been with MTV for more three times-MTV Unplugged, Coke studio and Music Video awards. We have created an association with all the artistes for today. We are committed in building large scale music franchises and doing various music experiments. Musician and audience like to see new challenges thrown to them and see how musicians tackle them. We will experiment more and more not only with main stream, but independent as well. There is so much in the music eco-system in India that you keep pushing yourself. We want to play a large role in the music revolution that India is going through.
How many new shows are you planning this year?
Every quarter you will see us coming with something new every time. We have few shows on television currently and then we have digital show, music show and live events.
What is the next big thing that MTV will come up with?
In last three years, we have made large number of foray in independent music space. We have strong relation with artistes and advertisers and we want to leverage this market and this would be our next leap and that will be the space where you will hear the noise from.