MUMBAI: DTH player Tata Sky launched the 'nation's first service with four music genres on a pay TV platform' in Mumbai on Wednesday. Christened 'Music+', it has been launched in partnership with digital entertainment company Hungama.

DTH service provider Tata Sky will finally take a leap into the untapped under-served music content programming with the launch of Tata Sky Music+. The channel will cater to the mainstream Bollywood music and beyond drawing music primarily from the country, and outside. For the first time, genres with niche audience would be available on Pay TV platform; in short, an on-demand service.

Segregated into four segments - Mehfil, Indie Rootz, Jazz and More, and International, the service will be co-curated by composer trio Shankar Ehsaan Loy. The ‘International’ option, as the name suggests, will provide content from international music space across genres and styles from the eras of the old and the new. ‘Jazz & more’ will cater to the jazz and blues from India and beyond. Indie Rootz and Mehfil will be dedicated to the Indian music acts from the non-mainstream front for loyalists of independent music and ghazals, sufi aficionados respectively.

Speaking on the responsibility, Shankar Mahadevan said, “I am not gloating about us, but we make the ideal curators for Tata Sky Music+. The three of us share the kind of music spectrum that covers all genres. Ehsaan is more into Blues, I am into Classical and Loy listens to a lot of jazz, we sort of fit perfectly in this initiative.”

Currently judging a homegrown English music talent show, Ehsaan Noorani – celebrating his birthday today – addressed the issue of the uncovered regions and styles of music that the audience still has not been exposed to. Congratulating Tata Sky on the effort, Noorani added, “We (the trio) are more than Bollywood music. I am personally really glad that Tata Sky would be playing music from the genres like blues, jazz, alternative rock, sufi, ghazals, etc.”

Loy Mendosa had an interesting analogy to explain why different genres were incorporated into the initiative. He said, “I would be eventually bored of eating Chinese food everyday. It’s important to try other cuisines.” Loy even requested every attendee at the event to support the independent music scene.

Music+ will give Tata Sky subscribers exclusive access to a rich trove of music content ranging from the classics to the latest launches, and this will include music videos, concerts and artist interviews spanning genres from international pop, country, rock and indie music to jazz and blues, sufi, folk, nazms and ghazals. Subscribers of the service will be able to watch some of the biggest on ground music events and festivals in the country on their screens, says the company.

CEO of Hungama.com, Siddhartha Roy informed the necessity of filling the four voids that Music+ would be eventually executing. “It would function like any music channel. However, on the content front, it’s an extremely unique effort. We read our audiences and realised there continued to remain a heavy demand for these genres. In fact, wait and watch to see how informative and educative our content becomes with the growth of the channel.”

Answering the concern of the slow growth that haunts the idea of a non-mainstream genre content providing audio-video channel, Chief Commercial Officer of Tata Sky, Pallavi Puri said, “We felt there is a need to showcase the unique genres. Under Music+, consumer gets the option to select the genre of his choice, and consume the content throughout the clock. Tata Sky is glad to associate with Hungama who continue to remain the music experts here." Puri informed that the meeting between Hungama and Tata Sky for the collaboration lasted only five minutes, emphasising on the understanding that the two entities share.

The proposed lineup of artistes to be featured on Music+ includes Pankaj Udhas, Jagjit Singh, Elvis, Abba, Miles Davis, Eric Clapton, Salim Sulaiman, Armaan Malik and others.

Tata Sky Music+ will be avaialble on channel number 817 and will be available for all Tata Sky subscribers free for the first five days and subsequently priced at Rs three per day.