"It does bring everything together": Vineet Singh on Pocket FM’s collaboration with Sneha Khanwalkar for a crowdsourced sonic tune| Exclusive

Vineet Singh and Sneha Khanwalkar

In a revolutionary move for creative collaboration, Pocket FM, a leading audio series platform, is breaking new ground by inviting its audience to help shape its brand's signature tune. Partnering with renowned Bollywood music director Sneha Khanwalkar and her global creator platform, SoundCake—which boasts a thriving community of over 15,000 musicians, singers, and lyricists—Pocket FM is redefining how sonic identities are born. This trailblazing initiative marks the first time a brand’s sonic identity will be co-created by listeners and creators alike.

In an exclusive interview with Money Control,  Vineet Singh, VP of Brand and Communications at Pocket FM and music icon Sneha Khanwalkar, delved into the details of this innovative project. They shared insights into the concept, explained how the entire initiative works, and discussed the challenges they encountered along the way.

Excerpts from the interview:

Vineet: So like Sneha was saying, SoundCake has, millions of creators on the platform or, you know, hundreds of creators from across the world who are, and that's the platform. So what we are doing is SoundCake is gonna announce, to all the creators across, across the, across the platform that we're gonna be creating a sonic, tune together for Pocket FM, and everyone comes in and gives their entries, for that specific Sonic. And obviously, Sneha will, I mean, the brief is going to be, you know, based on Sneha's expertise. And then once these entries come in, you know, the top 100 will be shortlisted. It'll go to our employees, to social media, and then it'll come down to top 10, then it'll come down to top 3. And then post that 3, I think Sneha and everyone works together to make it, you know, market ready. And then, again, it goes out to, you know, everyone across the world, everyone votes the best one again. Sneha works her magic, and then, you know, it comes alive.

Sneha: So, basically, SoundCake, it's a it's a platform, and we have a community of around 10 to 12000 artists, and these are all within sound and music. We obviously eventually want to expand it to other creative areas. But, yeah, currently, we're focusing only on audio, and this year is going to be about that, this and the coming year. And, Pocket FM happens to be, our, first biggest campaign, because, so far, I've been able to use my, my synergy or whatever my social media presence and everything, and my understanding of the business and the creative talent pool, we have been able to build a great community, and these are all really amazing sound artists or musicians or singers also. And I think, now with this campaign, the shout outs that we give out, the way the platform works is that we have this interface Okay. Which kind of looks like a scrabble board. Okay.

So when these, participants, get a shout out from wherever they can sort of come on the web page, they enter this call, this session, and they can upload their, file quite easily within seconds, then what happens is that this file is safeguarded, of course, on the web platform so that once the brand goes through these files, they can obviously listen to the files. And if they want to own them or download them, then there is a there's a basic PNC. And then we sort of handpick some of these melodies or some of maybe 100, a 150 tunes and then discuss amongst ourselves. So, basically, what happens is a lot of this collection of this or the crowdsourcing happens on this, really simplified interface that we've made on Sound Cake. That's how we would go about it.

Vineet: One of the core similarities between SoundCake and Pocket FM is we both believe that creators and community is core to our heart and what we're building as a brand. SoundCake in its own right is, trying to break the walls for creators across the world and get it giving them access to platforms that, you know, they may not, have access to. And, Pocket FM, as you know, is a brand built by creators.

Vineet: Like I said, I mean, we're both brands and, you know I think both brands are, have creators and community at the core of what we do, and what happens with that is anything that we've been doing. Right? And let's take Pocket FM, for example. Anything that we've been doing has been mostly community led. Right? So if you look at our stories, there are about 70,000 audio series, and there is a certain huge thousands of stories that are coming through community, through our writers, UGC writers. So, essentially scaling out something like this or doing multiple campaigns like this is not something that we're too worried about, because this will keep happening because we want to keep community at the core. From a music aspect is actually where it was difficult for us because we didn't know how we wanted to do this. For example, we could go out on social media. Right? And be like, hey, listen Yeah. Give me your audio tunes, and we'll make that our, listening. But that won't work because there's a certain amount of finish that is needed. There's a certain amount of, understanding of what how to take the brand essence and convert it into a tune that they want. That was needed. So essentially, I think this one was the more difficult one to do. I think overall working on campaigns with that skill won't be difficult. We'll obviously keep finding more and more partners to align with us, on this journey.

Vineet: So, essentially, we're technically launching the campaign now. I think the challenges and learnings will come in once we start, working if we're deep into the campaign, and then when people start sending and Sneha starts working on them. I think right now, I think the challenge right now for us, we're just brainstorming together to figure out how we could do this. Because, see, these are extremely like I said, these are, extreme there's so many minute details that come across creating something for a brand just in terms of what you're gonna put out, but how you're gonna, you know, have a process of making sure that you get the really right stuff out. So I think, the challenge currently, I mean, was that just getting everything in place, getting a structure in place, which I think would be able to work for Mac work the magic for us. But overall, I mean, I'm sure there'll be there'll be some learnings that will come out from this once we once we once we launch this.

Vineet: Perspective, I mean, with some something that arise and, is derived from the essence of the brand and what we believe in. It needs to sound nice. I that that obviously is one criteria.

Sneha: So we are discussing the brief, and we have a brief, and we obviously are going to, make sure that whatever, is communicated and whatever comes to us is aligned with the brief because I'm sure there are a lot of talented people out there, but it's also about getting the brief correctly. So that is that, and there's also quality check. So, there are a bunch of things that we obviously will factor in. But I think with, Pocket FM and a little bit of my experience, we hack it. It's a lot of fun, actually.

Sneha: First of all, very grateful and, very happy to be associated with Pocket FM. The way it's, taken over is amazing. And, and it does as he as Vineet also put rightly that it's the whole community creation is very, very much something that they already align with. And given my experience, literally all my experience and all my, all the stuff that I've analyzed over the last 10 years of my career, I have the sound cake has literally taken birth out of that. Because I have, I have found that, yes, I didn't want to sit in a city and limit myself, and I've gone around as much as I could. And it has got us some great voices and some great musicians because they, really, I mean, life wouldn't have brought us together. So, but music should not be held back, yeah, because of industrial limitations. So all of this has sort of given birth and, of course, COVID. And then the boom in the creative, industry, has everything together has now percolated in this sound cake and I'm all thanks to actually Pocket FM to see it for what it is and, for doing this campaign. So we are really honored.

Also read: Exclusive: AI-powered tools to play a crucial role in streamlining content creation and distribution, says Pocket FM's Suyog Gothi

Sneha: It is, you know, because see what happens is that earlier when I would also work, I would be limited geographically for various reasons, resources, and then the time, and to be able to travel, you know, abroad, etcetera with equipment. It's all not feasible. There are a lot of times when you have to India but up. And you want to collaborate with some people and they probably are up and about in their studio. What happens then?

I wanna work with somebody who's in Trinidad, but he's awake. And, musicians. So there's that time and region, like geography and time, we want to overcome. And obviously, we have we have a lot of, talent from across the world that are excited to work in the Indian industry as well. It does bring everything together. So it doesn't really, yeah, it doesn't limit you to just one region and one kind of, kind of thinking. Like, somebody who's sitting in, Sweden maybe and who takes this brief is going to think about it differently because he lives in a very different landscape. And we want to be open to that, because that's how music should be.