MUMBAI: English music channel 9XO recently completed seven years and on this occasion, 9XO, 9XM programming head Clyde D’Souza spoke about 9XO’s journey.

He said, “It’s been a great journey right from where we had begun. Many channels have gone back and forth, made changes in their ‘programming sector’, but we have stuck to being what we are.”

It’s a fact that English music has risen on a wider scale in India with the entry of International brands in the market. “Niche is becoming the mass with global brands coming to India. People from small towns are also consuming International music. Earlier metros on a huge scale used to have access to internet but now the scenario has changed,” he explained.

He gave an example of how genres like K-pop are coming to India, “A lot has been spoken about K-pop and there is a huge demand of it now. In fact, there is a rise on kids consuming international markets. The channel is considered a very niche channel; it is not like other channels that have a massive following. Having said that it was and there are people who love our product.”

9XO’s constant strive has been to connect with the young audience with FB voting show around love songs called ‘9XO Bae Time’. The channel has built an audience with huge innovations and followed trend charts. Some of their 9XO College TV’, dedicated to college students where the channel would showcase all happenings across the coolest colleges in India, 9XO’s another property, ‘O Bot Top Five’, where a display of popular songs from various genres and themes would be broadcasted.

Most of 9XO’s marketing is done on social media with on-air show innovations as D’Souza revealed.  He pointed out their best innovations, which happen to be ‘Insta Top 10’ - a music countdown with votes from Instagram, 9XO Stories featuring Insta Stories of international celebrities.  

Hook was also one such app that matches you with someone, who likes the same songs. Another one was Snapstars where viewers were asked to take selfies using one of the Snapchat filters’. Every week, we would ask them to face swap with their favourite artist and that would be put on-air.

“We are just sticking to what we are known for and would adopt new ways. At 9XO, we concentrate on curating best international music videos. There’s a growing demand for international music thanks to the internet and 9XO becomes the destination to discover a curated playlist," concluded D'Souza.