MTV Indies

MTV Indies was an Indian music and youth culture television channel based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, operated by Viacom18. Launched in February 2014 as Pepsi MTV Indies, in partnership with PepsiCo, it was devoted to independent music and the wider subcultures around it, including independent film, art, comedy, street culture and fashion. Unlike the mainstream, film-song-led music channels that dominated Indian television at the time, MTV Indies set out to give independent artists a national broadcast platform of their own.

The channel was short-lived as a linear television service. It was replaced on air by the Hindi music channel MTV Beats at the end of September 2016, and the Indies brand continued afterwards on digital platforms. MTV Indies is therefore written about here in the past tense, as a defunct channel whose brief life, from 2014 to 2016, captured a particular moment in the growth of India's independent music scene. Its parent company's website is www.viacom18.com.

Overview

MTV Indies was a 24-hour channel built around independent, or indie, culture. It was led by music, but it was never intended to be only a music-video service. Its founders described it as a platform for independent subcultures, built in collaboration with a collective of artists and supporters of the independent scene, covering independent films, visual art, comedy and other alternative art forms alongside songs and live performance.

The channel broadcast in high definition with Dolby 5.1 surround sound and was distributed across leading direct-to-home satellite and digital cable platforms in India. From the start it was also designed as a multi-platform brand rather than a television channel alone, with a website, a mobile music-discovery application, live events and, later, a linked radio programme all carrying the same name and the same catalogue of independent artists.

Origins and Launch

The channel was unveiled on 5 February 2014, when Viacom18 Media announced a co-branded service with PepsiCo India as title sponsor. Contemporary reporting noted that PepsiCo's title sponsorship was agreed for three years, and that the announcement coincided with PepsiCo unveiling new packaging and a refreshed global visual identity for its flagship brand. The Hindu BusinessLine reported that the channel was to launch that same month, in both high and standard definition, across leading DTH and digital cable networks.

The formal launch followed on 20 February 2014, marked by an all-star music jam involving prominent names from the Indian independent scene. Launch coverage described a preview of the four platforms that together made up the brand: television, web, mobile and live events. One launch report described the evening being staged inside a three-storey house, intended to suggest a homecoming for the independent scene, with performances from leading independent acts. By March 2014 the channel was on air and operating, and later properties from that spring were described as coming from a channel that had been creating space for indie artists since its inception that March, reflecting the phased way in which a new channel reached platforms and audiences in its first weeks.

Ownership and the Pepsi Partnership

MTV Indies was operated by Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd, which at the time was a 50:50 joint venture between Viacom Inc. and Network18. Within Viacom18, the channel sat in the youth and music portfolio alongside the flagship MTV India channel. Aditya Swamy, executive vice president and business head of MTV India, also headed the new channel, and group chief executive Sudhanshu Vats presented the launch as part of a deliberate strategy of sharper segmentation by genre, audience and market within Viacom18.

The Pepsi partnership was more than a naming deal. PepsiCo India was title sponsor, the channel carried the Pepsi name in its on-air identity as Pepsi MTV Indies, and executives from both companies presented the service as a co-created and co-curated platform. PepsiCo's marketing leadership argued at launch that music was a central passion for young consumers and that independent musicians making original work in many languages were on the rise in India. For MTV, Swamy argued that the two brands together could build something larger than a conventional sponsored programme block: a round-the-clock channel shaped with a brand partner from the beginning.

The Idea Behind the Channel

The rationale offered in 2014 was that Indian youth culture was changing. Viacom18 argued that consumption was moving from collective, mainstream tastes towards more individual choices, and that independent musicians, filmmakers, comedians and artists were building audiences of their own outside the film industry. MTV Indies was intended to turn that emerging trend into a full broadcast service, taking alternative art forms into millions of homes that would not normally encounter them in clubs, festivals or online niches.

In interviews, Swamy described the channel as playing in the world of subcultures. Beyond music, viewers were promised street and graphic art and graffiti, offbeat fashion designers, motorcycle culture and customised motorcycles, and other underground scenes from across the country. The channel presented itself in striking terms, as a platform by, of and for artists, and its supporters described their ambition as moving independent work from subculture towards wider popular culture, without requiring artists first to succeed in mainstream film music.

Programming

Programming combined music videos and performances with magazine-style features about the scenes around the music. Launch descriptions listed mood-based, user-generated playlists; artists busking on the streets of India; an indie guide strand intended to bring viewers up to speed with developments in the independent world; stories from backstage; features on iconic album artwork; and segments on graffiti art, bespoke automobile design and avant-garde fashion. The mix was deliberate: a viewer who arrived for a song could also encounter the designers, venues, illustrators and promoters who sustained the culture around it.

The channel also looked for independently made formats that already existed outside television. One early example discussed in trade coverage was Headbanger's Kitchen, a cooking programme created by Sahil Makhija, vocalist and rhythm guitarist with the metal band Demonic Resurrection, in which members and former members of Indian metal bands cooked and discussed food. The channel took the first two seasons of the independently produced show for broadcast, and its programming team was reported to be considering similar scripted or creator-led formats made by musicians, dancers, comedians and other artists.

Artists, Properties and Collaborations

MTV Indies developed named properties to surface new work regularly. Pepsi Unbox, launched a few months into the channel's life, presented a new indie artist video on the channel each month, giving a predictable, recurring showcase to acts that might otherwise have struggled for television exposure. Such strands mattered for independent artists because a single broadcast appearance could sit alongside the channel's website, app and live promotions, rather than disappearing after one play.

A later collaboration showed the channel's electronic and visual side. Superdry Krunk Live Sessions, made with the clothing brand Superdry and premiering in late October in the channel's second year, paired electronic musicians with visual artists in performance. Musicians billed for the series included Kumail, OX7GEN, Nicholson, Donn Bhat, Madboy/Mink, Alo Wala, Aqua Dominatrix and Your Chin, working with visual artists and collectives including Moebius, Wolves, Transhuman Collective, Godgamut and Oblique. It was hosted by DJ Mo City, the stage name of Mohammed Abood, a DJ and music entrepreneur associated with the reggae sound system Reggae Rajahs and with club nights and festival programming including NH7 Weekender and Sunburn. Channel executives described the format as an attempt to go beyond conventional electronic dance music and beyond graffiti, into a stylised meeting of sound and sight.

Beyond Television: Digital, Radio and Live

From its launch, MTV Indies treated television as one part of a wider system. Its website streamed videos and allowed users to build playlists, share gig updates and follow other indie fans. A dedicated music-discovery application for Android and iOS included music-recognition technology aimed specifically at independent music, with the underlying catalogue of songs being tagged so that listeners could identify tracks they heard. Concerts and festivals were described at launch as a key part of the brand's footprint, consistent with a scene whose centre of gravity was live performance.

Radio became another extension. The channel tied up with Radio One 94.3 FM for a three-hour Thursday night programme, presented as the Pepsi MTV Indies Thursday Show and launched to mark World Music Day on 21 June. Hosted by Teejay Sidhu, it aired simultaneously in seven cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad and Chennai. It carried indie music from across the country, artist appearances and interviews, news of gigs and online initiatives, and features drawn from the television channel, giving artists exposure on a medium that had long supported Indian bands and their loyal followings.

Audience and Place in the Viacom18 Portfolio

MTV Indies occupied a deliberately narrow position next to a broad flagship. MTV India was the established youth brand, associated in Viacom18's own account with introducing India to pop culture as a commercial and social phenomenon. Indies was the specialist sibling: a segmented service for listeners already curious about non-film, independent work, and for scenes in electronic music, metal, folk-influenced songwriting, comedy, film and street art that rarely fitted the flagship's schedule.

Executives also spoke openly about the business design. The channel was presented as a pay channel with several possible revenue streams, including subscription income, live events and gigs, international distribution, consumer products and licensing, supported by lower additional costs because it could draw on the wider Viacom18 network. Its promotion was expected to lean on network channels first, followed by outdoor advertising once distribution had settled, and on college festivals, live events, word of mouth and localised digital media. That model reflected the reality of its audience: young, urban, digitally active and more likely to discover music through peers and events than through conventional television promotion alone.

Closure and Replacement by MTV Beats

On 7 September 2016 Viacom18 announced a redesign of its youth and music portfolio. MTV Indies was to come off air, to be replaced by MTV Beats, a new 24-hour Hindi music channel aimed at a much more mass audience, with a predominant focus on Bollywood music. Contemporary coverage reported that Indies would go off air by the end of September 2016.

The redesign created three distinct MTV experiences. The flagship MTV channel was to concentrate on youth programming, long-format shows and branded content; MTV Beats would serve everyday Hindi music listening for viewers aged roughly 15 to 30 in urban and rural India, with playlists organised around moods through the week; and MTV Indies would continue to serve the indie subculture, but on digital platforms rather than as a broadcast channel. Group chief executive Sudhanshu Vats framed the change as an opportunity to place the MTV brand into more sharply segmented content categories, rather than as a judgement that independent culture itself had failed.

Legacy

MTV Indies lasted only about two and a half years as a television channel, but its significance was larger than its lifespan. It was, at the time, an unusual attempt by a major broadcaster and a major consumer brand to build an entire channel around music and art made outside India's dominant film system, in many languages and genres, and to support it with television, web, mobile, radio and live platforms at once. For artists in electronic music, metal, independent songwriting and related scenes, it offered national visibility that club circuits and online video alone could not easily provide.

Its closure also illustrated the commercial limits of that ambition on linear television. A mass-market Hindi music service could promise Viacom18 a broader audience than a specialist indie channel, so the broadcast slot moved to MTV Beats while the indie idea survived in the less costly digital space. Remembered from Mumbai, where Viacom18's youth business was based, MTV Indies remains a concise case study in both the energy of India's independent scene in the mid-2010s and the difficulty of sustaining a niche music channel on Indian television.