Sony MIX’s Dhun brings together media heads to sing for musicians

Sony MIX is celebrating its 5th Anniversary in an unusual way. The Hindi music channel from Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) has sought to make singers out of the country’s leading media heads for its ‘The Dhun Project’. This project has been initiated to pay tribute to musicians in India and aims to give back to India’s rich musical heritage by raising funds to empower musicians and educate across levels.

As part of the project, a unique lyrical composition has been curated to serve as ‘The Dhun Project’ anthem, championing the cause. Sony MIX, for the first time ever, has brought together 11 stalwart CXOs from the advertising and media industry to record an exclusive music video for the anthem. They include CVL Srinivas (GroupM), Vikram Sakhuja (Madison Media), Shashi Sinha (IPG Mediabrands), Sandip Tarkas (Future Group), Amin Lakhani (Mindshare Fulcrum), Anupriya Acharya (Publicis Media India), Shuchi Singhal (Idea Cellular), Harish Shriyan (Omnicom Media Group India), Sonal Dabral (DDB Mudra Group), Rohit Gupta (SPN) and Neeraj Vyas (SPN).

Watch: Sony MIX’s Dhun Project - Giving Back to Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LekLku1GXo

The first leg of The Dhun Project involves Sony MIX’s contribution of Rs 10 lakh towards helping a musician who needs medical support. The Dhun ambassador for this year is Roshan Ali (a dholak player).

On the other hand, the project is leveraging the crowdsourcing platform Ketto.org, co-founded by actor Kunal Kapoor, to raise funds for Spic Macay to organise a series of events across the country that will enable heritage musicians to perform in schools and colleges.

Young students will be exposed to music performed by nationally celebrated musicians, who in turn will continue to earn a living from this artistic endeavour.

Commenting on the initiative, NP Singh, CEO, Sony Pictures Networks India, said, “Music is a terrific medium of empowerment and we, at Sony Pictures Networks are proud to espouse an art that aligns with and supports our business. With The Dhun Project, we want to encourage talented musicians, to help them further contribute to music in India and inspire society with the melodies they create that harmoniously unite us.”

Neeraj Vyas, Senior EVP & Business Head - Max Cluster & Sony Mix, Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN), added here, “In a span of five years, Sony MIX has risen to become one of India’s leading music channels. This achievement is solely the people’s endorsement of our vision - to be the most music-centred destination on Indian television. On the occasion of our channel’s 5th anniversary, this is our way of giving back to music, by empowering its creators, curators and everyone associated with the art in India.”

The CSR initiative of SPN, ‘Ek India Happywala’, focusses on creating a positive impact in our ecosystem and is forged upon three core pillars – empowerment, education and environment. Driving home the ideal of empowerment and education, ‘The Dhun Project’ by Sony MIX aims to bring new rhythm to the pulse of Indian music, thereby energising it. By supporting musicians and music curators, SPN, together with Sony MIX, builds around its intent of propelling music itself through the streets, homes and towns of the nation, uniting it in harmony as it surges in a crescendo of celebration.

What is the genesis behind The Dhun Project?
It clearly came out from the research done while we were shooting the Javed Ali show, which essentially was associated with musical instruments and jams. We wanted to get the same guys back who recorded those songs 30-40 years back. We realised that most of them have stopped playing or died cause of illness like cancer, and mostly have been out of work. That stayed in my head and I said we had to do something. We stand for good music, and these people have been the unnoticed pillars. However, we couldn’t go back to all of them, so we thought let’s start with helping one person at a time. We have a corpus of Rs 10 lakh per annum, which will be increased to Rs 25 lakh in the coming years.

What are your expectations from The Dhun Project?
We want to bring many more people on board, many more advertisers on board for something which is very real not for the sake of doing this. Real investing is more on the emotional attachment to the brand. Apart from the Rs 10 lakh being offered to the musicians, there is also a lot of emotional energy that goes into it.

I am a huge consumer of music myself. Music can uplift you, it can make you feel good, there are so many ways in which music is good for you. Music is consumed by a mass of people, so our intention is to give some recognition to a few of them through our Dhun Project. There are hundreds of people working on one project, but nobody knows them. There may be 40 people playing violins in the background, but people don’t even know that violins are being played in the background.

What is the relationship with Keto.org and Spic Macay?
Keto is a website which basically discovers funding, so it is a part of the project. Spic Macay is an organisation which is very devoted to the care of artistes. We couldn’t have asked for better partners for this project.

What are the key milestones for Sony MIX in its 5-year journey?
There are many milestones; we were the first to clear the spread of music that caters to once segment, we were the first ones to give credit to each and every person associated with a song – be it musicians, lyricists, composers, year of release. There have been so many firsts.

What is the channel positioning today?
‘Dekho, suno, gun gunao’ – we are the most musical channel in India. As far as content is concerned, we keep doing jams, solos, there is a show with Annu Kapoor, there is a show with RJ Anmol. Besides, we keep coming up with new seasons.

Do you think dramas on music channels dilute the content?
Yes, of course! There has to be a different destination for that. People want to listen to music, so we play music. For things like drama, series, reality shows, there has to be another destination.

Today, people are increasingly consuming music on digital platforms like Gaana.com, Hungama, Saavn, etc. What kind of challenges do they pose to music channels?
We manage all the stages, it’s a co-existence thing. We don’t find any kind of threat.

We will try to make more videos for Sony Liv, our OTT app. Probably videos that are not available on Sony MIX will be available on Sony Liv to reach the digital audience as well.