The multi-faceted Nikhil Chinapa is known for uplifting the dance music in India. Founded in the year 2002, his company Submerge, has been dedicated in working for the same by bringing prominent DJs to India such as the likes of Above & Beyond, Swedish House Mafia, Alesso, Deniz Koyu, Armin Van Buuren, Zedd, Hardwell and Tiesto to India.
Chinapa who juggles the roles of a DJ, VJ, entrepreneur and radio host, speaks to Radioandmusic.com about his popular weekly radio show called ‘Together’ (TGTR) on completion of 100 episodes. In this week of Musical Rendezvous, Chinapa elaborates about TGTR.
More radio shows is definitely the need of the hour, but we also need more dance music which is in its infancy. Swedish House Mafia sold a whole bunch of tickets, Deadmau5 surprisingly sold lot few tickets than Swedish House Mafia. People are aware about such acts but I believe there is a lack of awareness about different acts in dance music.Talking about the radio show I believe that by playing back to back music, one would end up catering to the people who already like dance music. I rather have a radio show that discusses about the artistes, history of this genre which could cater to the people who are not interested in dance music. Having said that, there is nothing wrong in DJ’s presenting back to back music as it is their style and way of presenting music. I am just talking about what I feel is the need of the hour in India today.
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Streaming Bandwidth is the problem in India and I am aware of that. We will get better and better as time progresses. I have personally felt and received very good responses from Mixcloud and we post most of our previous shows on this online platform as an archive.
A team of people work on the show with Naved (Khan) who works on the playlist and passes it on to me. I take a look at it, fine tune it if required. Anirudh digs out information about the artistes. After I get the playlist and the info sheet, I record the voice links. Post zipping the link together, I send it to Zohaib who runs an institute called AudioQube. They sit together with the engineers and package the entire show together which is then uploaded on Nishant’s server so that it can be played every Sunday.
Since it requires team work, we have named the show as ‘Together’.
Most of the traffic comes from India. We clock more numbers on Mixcloud as they provide an opportunity to listen to radio show at their own time. We also broadcast on Sunday 9 pm, which is also the prime time viewing for many blockbuster movies. Sunday is the time most of the people are free and that is the time Naved and I have the time to be on twitter.
We have a very active twitter section and engagement during the radio show. I like to interact with people who are listening to the show. That’s why we picked Sunday. We did a live broadcast for our 100th radio show from Kitty Su, Delhi. Everything worked perfectly; we tested it at home and once before the gig. Once the gig went on something happened to Soundcloud and the audio was just horrendous so you can see live pictures and see the entire show but could not really hear anything which was disappointing. There is a potential to go live with the radio show from the events that we are doing in various venues.
The radio show is based very much on our enthusiasm and curiosity. If there is something interesting happening in music around the world, we just throw it in there. We have gone through a serious of changes and revamp. We have now finished our 107th episode well over two years of doing the show. Nikhil Chinapa
