MUMBAI: NH7 is one of the longest highway in the country between Lakhnadon in North to Kanyakumari in South, connecting two ends of the spectrum. Initiated with the same intention of bringing the Indian music scene together, providing daily updates with music, news, features and reviews of bands, NH7 is a music portal started by Only Much Louder's Vijay Nair in association with music blog Indiecision. The portal was officially launched on 1 September at the Nokia Music Connects 2010.

The enthusiasm in his voice cannot be hidden as NH7's editor, Arjun S Ravi passionately talks about the site and music scene in India. "Our primary focus is to bring the Indian music scene together which has undergone several changes in the past few years. A lot of done which mainly lacked Indian soul, the ethos of these sites didn't fit the Indian music scene well. Also since radio and television do not give airtime to anything apart from Bollywood, we have come up with a platform where people can discover new music."

"We have artistes on board that are not a part of the mainstream act. So you wont find a Britney Spears or a Backstreet Boys but you will find a Vampire Weekend or Pentagram. So in some ways we monitor the content that goes on to the site. There are profile of more than 150 artistes, bands and we are adding new ones everyday," he further boasts off.

The website will provide news about bands, gig reviews, gig calender and various other content which will be refurnished with everyday. We want to give users a fair review about the music. We are very honest and if I must say brutal in our writing for which we have also faced brickbats", chuckles Arjun who is also the editor of Indiecision, "but we are determined to provide a fair review."

One of the few ubercool features that the site boasts of are own personalized magazine. NH7 integrates Facebook with their site wherein with one click, each user will get their own customized homepage based on their music choices on Facebook. "Once signed in, we filter articles, artists and events based on what music and artistes you like or follow on Facebook and create your very own personalized magazine. Users wont have to wade through tonnes of content to get to what they like. NH7 sorts that for you," explains Arjun. It also allows users to follow their friends and discover all the content they find interesting, instantaneously. Users can even discover people who have the same taste in music as them.

The site also features a radio player where listeners can create and maintain their very own playlists from the hundreds of streams that are available on the site. Users can add all the songs they want free of cost and listen to them without any interruption. "The radio player has a cool feature wherein the player will automatically suggest tracks similar to what you would have been listening. If you are a death metal fan it will suggest few more artistes whom you can give a listen. Unlike radio and television where you have no choice but to listen to the same songs whether or not you are interested, at NH7 nothing is pushed down your throat. We infact recommend songs in your preferred genre. Also we don't think DRM will work in 2010 hence we want to give users free music that they can consume music everywhere."

Talking about the revenue model that the portal would be exploring Arjun explains, "We are into digital product services and we get a  fair amount of revenues from there. We created the iPhone app for Swarathma, the first for Indian band. We have also created app for music director trio Shankar Ehsaan and Loy. For NH7, we will go through the traditional route of advertising but with a twist. We do not want the advertiser to simply put an ad that users just see through. We will try and customise the ads as well so that the advertisers can have an interaction with their target audience. We will also get into merchandise for bands."

Refusing to divulge details about the investment Arjun adds sheepishly, "I can say that a lot has been put in terms of both finance and time. It is a big sum but its budgeted properly and put out logically."

The site plans to promote itself through social networking media. "Before the official launch there was a lot of buzz created about it through word of mouth. We also ran a small social media promotion campaign before the launch. The day we launched we were swamped with so many hits so much so that we had to buy server space to accommodate the traffic. We are very happy with the initial response."

The portal also plans to send a newsletter to its users to keep them updated about their favourite artistes. "There is so much content uploaded everyday that users are bound to miss out on news. So we plan to start a weekly newsletter soon enough that will contain snapshot of gigs coming up in the user's city, reviews of national and international albums and a lot."

The portal also plans to launch an online music store within next two months where in it will sell digital music, band's merchandise, gig tickets. The website has also planned a two day music festival in December titled 'NH7 Weekender.' Though the venue of the festival is undecided, Pune is on top of the list. "We are roping in some big national and international artistes for the fest and the ticket for the fest will be sold via NH7 store."

"NH7 is just a start and we overwhelmed by the amount of appreciation we have gathered. The site is still in its first phase and a lot of features will be added over the time that will help people discover new music. A lot of music providing models have come in the past but most of them were flawed and couldn't sustain. In NH7 we have our pulse on music and music technology. We may not be 100 per cent sure but know the industry well to predict a fairly good model," concludes Arjun.

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