Jaideep Singh talks to I Kaur about his association with Nikhil Chinappa and the successful positioning of VH1 Supersonic
There was a time when the only thing EDM fans all over the country waited for were those three days in December when they could flock themselves in Goa to watch Nikhil Chinappa pave the path for live commercial electronic music. This year too, people waited eagerly and what they got was the same man, at the same time, but at a different place. After Nikhil’s recent break up with Percept, it didn’t take Viacom 18’s business head, Jaideep Singh too long to team up with the jockey and before one knew it they had their own five-day EDM fest doing rounds. VH1 Supersonic began two days before Sunburn and ended last night.
According to Singh, having the fest along with another EDM fest in Goa was a brilliant idea. He said, “It makes sense because the biggest EDM fans in India are in Goa at this time. I think the market has expanded a lot. We are only catering to the need of the market. Apart from that, Goa is one place that can easily hold two fests because the venue capacity and audience are there.”
Marking stark similarity with Sunburn, the fest did come under the scanner for plagiarism, but Singh waved it off. “While developing the whole concept, we didn’t even think of Sunburn. Supersonic’s positioning is different from Sunburn and we have our own look and feel. In fact, I feel that as we move forward people may end up attending both the fests at their own convenient timings,” he shared.
Supersonic’s first edition was focussed on camaraderie, said Singh. “We positioned it as a place where friends could come together to listen to pure EDM music. The line up was created keeping that in mind. Nikhil is a guy who understands this space very well and he brought in a different element in the way people listened to music and experienced a festival. There was a lot of focus on the safety of women and in keeping the fest absolutely clean.” he added.
Spreading the fest across five days was a cause of worry for many but “I believed in Nikhil’s vision. He was confident that it would work and I went with that. Goa has enough bandwidth to hold a fest for five days. Also with the way the music was composed and the programming has been done for the festival, it needed these many days,” elaborated Singh.
The line up of artistes at the fest was also a mix of the old, new and standing. “What we kept in mind was that we needed to have a good mix of iconic EDM players, people who have been in the scene for a while and those who have just entered the scene. That is why the stress was not on a few big names but keeping a balance and bringing in more genres of EDM to the people’s notice,” he explained.