MUMBAI: While everybody in the television space is in a rush for more GRPs (gross rating points) one issue is whether the music television genre, which went towards being more youth oriented before coming back to music, needs to also focus a lot on GRPs when it comes to advertisers. Should there be other KPIs (key performance indicators)?

MTV claims to have had success at looking at other KPIs through innovations like Coke Studio. However there may not be many advertisers like Coca Cola who are willing to do out of the box innovations in the music television space. If there were the genre would benefit greatly. Also there is place for pure play music channels like Mix (Sony's recently launched channel) to co-exist with an MTV which also does reality shows. The key is to look after talent so that they do not appear to be like clones.

The points came out in a session at the Nokia Music Connects confab for the best of the minds in the Indian and international music and entertainment business. It was organised by radioandmusic.com and Nokia. The session was called 'Music Television, Reality Shows - The Opportunities. The moderator was Indiantelevision.com Group founder, CEO Anil Wanvari. The panelists were Max, Mix EVP, business head Neeraj Vyas, MTV India EVP, business head Aditya Swamy, Bacardi director marketing Arvind Krishnan, former Indian Idol finalist Meiyang Chang, singer Anushka Manchanda and Naked Communications founding partner Gitanjali Sriram.

Swamy made the point that a music channel should not be about GRPs. "We need to look at other measures." He gave the example of coke Studio where Rs 2500 tickets were sold at Hard Rock caf?© and 11 concerts took place.

Sriram backed him up saying that when the Coke Studio idea was conceived the aim was to do it for the love of music. A different set of KPIs were looked at. 10,000 CDs were sold in three weeks. The key to success is to put expectations before oneself before starting anything. At the same time initiatives are done keeping in mind both brand love and creating an immediate sale. Both need to be present.

Swamy however added that MTV is two faced. It is a question of balancing both sides. So you have MTV Roots which often showcases unsigned artistes. At the same time you have Roadies which gets in viewers.

However Vyas was categorical in saying that evaluation of performance boils down to GRPs. "If there were more Cokes we would be happy. We saw that the age group 24-40 was underserved. Our aim is to be the GEC of Hindi music. In terms of mood it is milk in the morning and whiskey in the evening. The genre only gets 150 GRPs a week and it should be doing better than that."

Swamy adds that MTV's thinking is to not look at it as just a TV product. The channel gets millions of views on Youtube, is able to get an artist to trend on Twitter.

Sriram noted that a crowd sourcing model will happen. In that case the key is to talk to brands and inspire them to be leaders in media. Krishnan noted that often brand mangers need to take a leap of faith when doing tie ups. The company is being associated with a music festival taking place in Pune over the weekend. "However I don't have a straight answer on ROI."

Offering an artistes point of view Manchanda noted that while the girl band Viva was a great platform there was no guidance for her in terms of how to build her career once the show was over. "I lucked out and became a VJ." She then went into playback singing. As she notes if she was an independent songwriter, singer she would not earn much money. She feels that the channel should give something back to the talent which is allowing a show to be on air in the first place.

Chang though feels that it is not the channels prerogative to give an artiste more after the show is over. An artiste after getting a platform like Indian Idol then needs to build it up. He is getting back into music. The 'Indian Idol' experience helped him get a contract with Sony Music.

Sriram said that one cannot expect record labels, producers to take an artiste under their wing and nurture an artiste. "They are ambulance chasers. They can be manipulative. You need a service that caters to stars that come out of shows whether it is cooking, reality shows."