MUMBAI: As the technology advances and Indian audiences open up to new forms of music, most channels are now looking to explore with genres and promote the art in the country. In a constant move to innovate, international music channel 9XO is now all set to launch ‘OmeGrown’ featuring independent bands and artistes on 26 January.

The eight week property aims to promote the independent music scene in India by providing a platform to new and established bands and artistes in the space. The property will have three segments ‘O Shows’, ‘Indiegenius’ and ‘Big Daddy O’ that will showcase aspects of the indie music scene.

Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, 9XO programming head Luke Kenny said, “Through this property, we aim to give Indian independent music the support it was lacking. There is a huge community of music and most of the indie music is in English but most of the artistes had to choose the Hindi film playback route to survive. With technology gradually advancing, the musicians now have a platform to present their music to the audiences. Thus we launched ‘OmeGrown’ which means ‘Home Grown’ artistes.”

‘O Shows’ will witness bands like Shaair + Func, Something Relevant, Bay Beat Collective, Bombay Basement, Boxy Turvey, Light Years Explode, Sidd Basrur, Sky Rabbit and Zygnema amongst others, performing in unconventional venues across the city. The team will shoot a music video at the venue which will be played on rotation on the channel. Highlighting an example of the show, Shaair + Func had earlier performed at Gold Gym while Zygnema performed at a water park in Mumbai.

 ‘Indiegenius’, will showcase the trendsetters of pop culture from Beat Boxers to BMXers and will present a profile on their life and work. People working in the indie music scene will  be featured including Arjun Ravi (editor of Indiecision, co-founder of NH7) and Tanmay Bahulekar (beat boxer).

The third property will be the ‘Big Daddy O’ that will profile stalwarts from the music industry including Dhruv Ghanekar (composer, founding partner of Smoke Music Productions), Ehsaan Noorani (musician), Farhad Wadia (founder of I-Rock), Gino Banks (musician), Ma Faiza (DJ), Uday Benegal (vocalist of Indus Creed) and a special tribute to late musician Amit Saigal.

“We have selected around eight people for each segment and will profile them for eight weeks on the channel. Moving ahead, we will feature more artistes and a high repeat rotation of the music videos,” he highlighted.

Following with its philosophy of no-appointment viewing, each segment of the property will be showcased on the channel for a week and thereafter witness a rotation period to ensure maximum reach to audiences.

This being the first season of the property, bands, artistes and location for ‘O Shows’ have been limited to Mumbai keeping the cost in mind. But Kenny claimed that the property will further expand to other cities pan India with the upcoming seasons. Apart from that, the channel also has big plans to take the property on-ground with a line-up of concerts featuring each band.

Kenny stated, “The promos are on-air and we are also pretty active with social media, but now we are also planning to host on-ground concerts to take this a step ahead. But with so many music festivals schedule to be held in this period, we don’t want to clash with them as it will make us lose out on the essence of the property.”

Within nine months of its launch, the channel has well established itself in the music space with its varied content offering and objective to promote newer forms of music. With constant innovations up its sleeve, the channel seems to be swiftly moving up the ranks with ‘OmeGrown’ and other shows like ‘Love a Thon’ and a ‘Women’s Special’ slated to launch around Valentine’s Day and Women’s Day respectively.