Get immersed in music as MTV Unplugged is back with sixth season

Royal Stag Barrel Select has again come on board as the solo sponsor on the property for the fifth season in a row. This season features a perfect line-up of some of the biggest stars from Bollywood

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | January 11, 2017

Weaving 10 musical episodes with 13 singers, the sixth season of MTV Unplugged will be launched together on MTV, MTV Beats and Voot. The flagship music channel of Viacom18, MTV will telecast the show first from January 14 at 8pm. The time band for MTV Beats and the online platform Voot will be announced later.

Royal Stag Barrel Select has again come on board as the solo sponsor on the property for the fifth season in a row. The brand's first association with the show was in season 2. Ferzad Palia, Head, Youth and English Entertainment, Viacom18, said, “We always keep this property lighter on advertising and we have only one sponsor on board. The spot buys are open and we have sold the property at a premium rate.”

Raja Banerji, Assistant Vice-President, Marketing, Pernod Ricard India, said, “Royal Stag Barrel Select MTV Unplugged continues to tread on this successful journey to create one of the finest and most refined musical shows. This season features a perfect line-up of some of the biggest starts from Bollywood performing unplugged -- music in its most pristine form. This musical extravagance brings alive the brand's philosophy of 'Make it Perfect' in every way.”

This season has a massive line-up, including AR Rahman. He has also gone online and crowdsourced the lyrics for Urvashi. The show will also have Badshah, who brings Hip Hop as the music genre for the first time on Unplugged.

The other stars on the show are Shahid Mallya, Amit Mishra, Shreya Ghoshal, Sachin-Jigar, Jubin Nautiyal, Jasleen Royal, Amit Trivedi, Benny Dayal, Neeti Mohan, Divya Kumar and Siddharth Mahadevan. These artists will put together 10 episodes, including single artist episodes, multi-artist episodes and the best of the previous season.

MTV Unplugged is a popular show with a cult following. Initially launched in 2011, the show had a lot of older audiences on the show. However, as the format evolved, it has attracted audiences and followers from all sections of the audience base. “Age group is no bar to a show like MTV Unplugged. It cuts across the board. More people are listening to music on more avenues.”

Music consumption (from both MTV Unplugged and Coke Studio) is seen substantially on the other platforms like radio channels, other television channels, YouTube and audio streaming sites. Palia explained, “The repeat consumption of a track which was loved by the audience is unmatched. So, a few episodes of even Season 1 are consumed heavily even now. That's not how any other long format show works, generally. When there are so many mediums playing it, you can't see the consumption based on the TV viewership.”

A few episodes from the last season featuring artists such as Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Pritam, Sukhwinder Singh attracted a lot of viewership. The channel claims that the last season raked in a reach of over 47 million on digital platforms and a reach of over 17 million over radio.

For marketing this year, the network will use a lot of digital, radio and BTL touchpoints. The network synergies will be used for the promotion of television. As Palia mentioned, for a property like this, one has to only announce that the show is back. “While we also keep striving for new audience sets, but a lot of it is word of mouth.”

Mentioning that it will be the biggest and greatest season to date, he added, “Unplugged music is music in its rawest form, stripped of all distractions, which makes it extremely powerful and allows the artist to truly display his or her prowess as a musician.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com