MUMBAI: Making a strategic move even before its official launch,  upcoming online station Radio Whiskey has exclusively signed independent artistes from India, Pakistan and New York to play their unreleased tracks on the channel.

Currently in its test stages, the channel will be on-air by Saturday for a few weeks as a test run to gauge the response and listenership it achieves. Though the programming and music scheduling has not been decided yet, the station has decided to move away from film music and play exclusive tracks from independent artistes signed by them. Aiming to stay differentiated and also promote independent music simultaneously Radio Whiskey has signed around nine prominent artistes from India, four from Pakistan and one from US.

The artistes and the music to be played were selected by a group of 90 jury members comprising of media personnel, businessmen and students amongst others. The songs were selected through a voting process and the chosen artistes then entered into an exclusive contract with the channel for a year. The channel will play only unreleased tracks of the artistes which have not been featured on any TV channel or station.

Speaking about the agreement with Radioandmusic.com, Radio Whiskey co-founder Madhukar Pandey says, "Before launching the channel we had a lot of questions in our mind regarding the music policy. We wanted to be different from the herd to engage our listeners. We came up with the concept of tying up with independent artistes from across the globe and playing their original tracks which is not available in the market. We have signed renowned artistes from Pakistan, India and New York and hope that this will also help in promoting independent music."

With no language barriers, the station will play Hindi, Punjabi and English music of the artistes. Pandey also aims to rope in artistes from Dubai and source Arabic music for the channel. Though the move is being highly appreciated by the team, it also comes with a high risk factor considering the fact that bollywood music is the dominant genre in India today.

“We realised that playing bollywood or international music would give us tough competition and also people already hear it a lot. We want to offer our listeners something fresh. In the beginning we will only play the music with our show jingle, we have not yet decided the shows and the RJs. It will just be back to back music,” he states.

Being billed as a different online radio station as compared to the rest, the station has been receiving a lot of investment and partnership requests from various mediums. The station has also sent across a CD to various clients featuring a dummy transmission of 30mins comprising of music and jingles composed for the station. But Pandey claims that they will only look at advertisers once the testing stage of the station is over as it will help in giving them leverage in terms of showcasing what the channel can offer. Pandey also states that they have plans of tying up with TV channels to promote the artistes signed by them.

He asserts, “We have been getting a lot of partnership requests to be the online music partner for albums in Pakistan and also getting a lot of advertisement requests from educational institutions considering ours is a youth channel. We also have extensive plans of tying up with TV channels and having concerts for the artistes that we have signed on. But we first want the channel to gain momentum so we can judge the target audience and then further decide on the kind of shows and music to be played. This will give us a leverage to get ads as well since we can show the advertisers what kind of response we are getting.”

As the channel gears up for its launch and the transmission, contracts along with other technical details are being prepared, the research team of Radio Whiskey is constantly on the move with new strategies and changes being introduced at every moment. With such big plans in store for the online station, Pandey is very clear that he does not expect quick and immediate results and understands that it will take considerable time for the station to start achieving success and ratings required. “Our core target group is the urban audience using the internet. I know and understand that I will not get loyal listeners immediately. It will take time for the listeners to get hooked on to the channel and the kind of music we will play, but I am looking forward to a positive response,” he concludes.