MAM
Nirvana Music set to launch official World Cup cricket album
MUMBAI: The World Cup cricket mania will soon become sweet music that cricket fans can lap up! Nirvana Music, a division of Nimbus, will be launching an album called “Khel Re” containing the official World Cup cricket 2003 Zulu-English song. “Khel Re” also has 11 other compilations sung by popular Indian music artists.
Nirvana Music has obtained the licence and merchandising rights for the official World Cup song from Lowe Lintas’ Advent Marketing division for the entire South Asian territory.
In an exclusive to indiantelevision.com, Nirvana Music’s vice president and business head Rahul Guha reveals: “The album, Nirvana’s biggest initiative till date, will be released by 18-20 January 2003. We have exclusively tied-up with MTV India and Radio City. For distribution purposes, we have joined hands with a music label which has a nationwide presence.” The promos will be aired on Radio City from 11 January 2003 onwards. However, Guha didn’t reveal the name of the music label.
In a press release dated 19 August 2002, the company had mentioned that it had a strategic alliance with Sony Music, giving Sony exclusive rights for manufacturing and distribution of Nirvana Music’s titles worldwide.
“It might appear as if ‘Khel Re’ is only about cricket. As the name indicates, it is not necessarily about the game of cricket but could be true for any other sport. It is a timeless ‘play-it often’ kind of an album. It invokes passions, urges people to dream and realise their dreams. It also reminds them that the path to success involves lots of hard work. Music lovers as well as cricket fans are going to enjoy listening to it again and again,” says Guha.
The official World Cup song is a Zulu-English composition called “Welcome”; with a nice beat and tempo that welcomes all the cricket lovers to South Africa and invokes the spirit of sports and competition. The other 11 songs have been composed by leading India music composers such as Jatin-Lalit, Sajid-Wahid, Lalit Sen and Rajesh Roshan. The list of singers include Sukhwinder, Abhijit, Alka Yagnik, Vasundhara Das, KK, Vinod Rathore, Sudesh Bhosale, Shankar Mahadevan and Sunidhi Chavan.
Nirvana Music will create three videos to promote the album. MTV has created special on-air programming that will include footage shot by themselves of the singers / music producers while they were recording the songs, including interviews and soundbites etc.
The major thrust of the promotional campaign will be on Radio FM – Star’s Radio City. It has also developed plans for conducting on-ground promotions. “Radio City will be used for a broader push. MTV India has also been very supportive and will showcase the videos. We shall put out the first lot of cassettes and CDs in the market and augment supplies based on the response,” adds Guha.
Nirvana Music is positioned as a boutique label and will concentrate primarily on creating non-conformist and non-traditional sounds in the non film category. It will also scout for new talent.
Its first collection “Guftagoo” has been released in three volumes containing over three hours of music. Set to the verse of poets and thinkers as diverse as Amir Khusro, Mirza Ghalib, Momin, Insha, Meer Teqi Meer and Meer Dard, the music is composed by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and arranged by Uttam Singh.
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Nimbus launches Nirvana Music division with ‘Guftagoo’
MAM
‘You packed my parachute’: Avinash Kaul’s farewell salutes Network18’s unsung thousands
The outgoing chief’s LinkedIn post skips the boardroom tributes and goes straight to the security guards, drivers and office boys who kept the machine running
MUMBAI: Most farewell posts by senior media executives follow a familiar script: gratitude to leadership, a nod to the team, a hint of what lies ahead. Avinash Kaul’s is not that post.
Writing on LinkedIn on his last day at Network18 Media & Investments, where he spent nearly 12 years rising to chief executive, Kaul bypassed the boardroom entirely and directed his most heartfelt words at the people furthest from it: the security guard who greeted him before the building was fully awake, the fleet staff who drove him to airports at ungodly hours, the office assistants, the housekeeping teams, and the administrators who, as he put it, “held ten thousand invisible threads so the rest of us could look organised.”
“You packed my parachute,” he wrote. “Every day. Without fanfare, recognition, or ever asking for it.”
It was a striking note from a man who leaves behind a considerable operational record. Kaul joined Network18 managing three channels and exits with responsibility for 20, alongside a publishing business, a growing connected television footprint, and what he says is the highest revenue and highest channel share in the group’s history. He was quick to deflect the credit. “Not because of me. Because of 4,000 people who showed up, every day, in every department, across the country.”
To content teams across India, he issued a reminder that carries some weight given the pressures Indian news media currently faces. “Keep being custodians of trust for 700 million people. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.”
To colleagues in revenue and ratings who found him relentless and hard to satisfy, he was unapologetic but generous. “There was never a single moment of ill intent in my heart. Everything I pushed you towards came from one belief – that you were stronger than you knew, and I was not willing to let you settle for less than your real capability.” Those who believed him, he said, flew. Those who did not taught him to be a better communicator. He was grateful to both.
On what comes next, he offered a hint wrapped in metaphor. Something is being built, he said, prepared for “the way you pack a bag before a long climb. Not out of restlessness. Out of readiness.”
In a media landscape that rarely pauses to acknowledge the people who keep the lights on, it was, at the very least, a different kind of goodbye.
