MUMBAI: In the past few years, MTV has been sternly criticized for changing its focus from music to reality shows. The Big M of MTV whose sole purpose was to promote artistes through videos seemed to be eclipsed by the series of reality shows like Splitsvilla, Stunt Mania, MTV Girls Night Out, Crunch and more. Now in 2011, MTV India has finally realized the musical void and curbing all the criticisms, the channel has once again embraced its basics with the introduction of musical content like Coke Studio@MTV India, Roots and the recent inclusion Unplugged.

Even though the channel's first initiative �Coke Studio@MTV India' has been an average show for the television audience, the series has done extremely well on Radio and on-digital front. The Minicerts project has aided in familiarizing the Coke studio songs with the Indian audiences leading to highest digital downloads and physical sales with more than million and half online hits, according to MTV India, channel head Aditya Swamy.

Swamy revealed, Coke studio on television was only to familiarize the audience with the artistes. The songs actually did pretty good when it went on-air and on digital. Coke studio sold around 5000 CD's in the first week of the launch which amazed labels, but the sale soared only because Coke Studio music was not like any other Bollywood songs that you hear every now and then....

With the digital success of Coke Studio, the company head has also planned a digital launch and new initiative for its October release show Unplugged. The show will showcase performances by popular artistes in an unadulterated and non-tampered form with acoustic music.

Speaking on the promotional plans Swamy states that the show will definitely be promoted on digital and on-ground but as Unplugged is 'hit musician, hit music done in acoustic', the treatment meted will be totally different. The Unplugged live will take place in iconic places like Bandra Amphitheater; so that audience get live experience....

Unplugged will also be promoted with an extensive use of social media. We are glad that now media is taking interest in promoting music, the extensive reach of social media helps us to promote our artistes to every part of the countries. The brand and media are actually helping audience to connect with the artistes,... he added

Shedding light on the positive response for the new content Swamy said, We can see there is music revolution happening, people are starving for alternative music, and Indian being musically reach there is no outlet for this music due to the vast reach of Bollywood. Music can never be done or rated on bases of TRP, the success of music will only be measure with new artistes coming up to the platform. We are providing that platform with shows like Roots, Coke Studio and Unplugged.