MUMBAI: A band of Boys team member and indie artist, Sherrin Varghese has always been vocal about and supported independent musicians. While Sherrin and his boyband are back on the music scene with song releases, Verghese has introduced a live music streaming property, which is his pet project.

Speaking about his live streaming digital music property, The Circuit, Sherrin said, “The Circuit is basically a concert platform live musical performance by guests who are peers and colleagues from the industry. The reason, we call it The Circuit is because it’s my ‘circuit’ in which, my friends from Bollywood circuit, indie and some from rock circuit and pop circuit are on board. I have devised a platform, where I am able to get my friends from the industry to perform their songs. It’s a live streaming show, where I am able to showcase the beauty of a live performance to the audience. The concept actually started with me wanting to make seven songs for which, I got on board some producers, lyricists, singers. While they'd be my songs, I will get them produced by the best in the world and then all make a 24 minute long video, whose first 20 minutes would be the who, why, what and how of the song. It will showcase the making of a song, its mood and the mystery behind it. The last four minutes will have its live performance of the same. Then I realised that if I don’t build this platform, it won’t make any sense. Hence, I decided to start this live concert streaming show, ‘The Circuit’.”

“I am building this show right now to such a level, where I have finished shooting for Season 1 with about 15-20 episodes. At the end of Season 1, I will drop my seven songs, which is the ‘hero’ content of the series,” he further added.

Further speaking on the format of the show, he said, “A show like this doesn’t exist in our country. Being a Live stream show and we take advantage of the active feedback from the audience as people chat, comment, and have song requests, to which we respond. This, in itself, is the most unique thing about the show.”

On the various artists, musicians featuring the show, Sherrin informed, “We’ve had artists like Shibani Kashyap, Caralisa Monteiro, Dairaa, Raman Mahadevan, Indiva, Rahul Pandey, Sidd Coutto, Chandresh Kudwa, Bhargavi Pillai, Shubhangi Joshi Collective, Anand Bhaskar Collective, etc. I have gotten very good, positive responses so far.”

When quizzed if A Band of Boys is associated with the property, the musician said, "'No', but they are my brothers and have also been a guest on the show’.

He also went on to reveal about his team behind The Circuit.

He said, “I have a team of about five people, one is an executive producer team called ‘iDreamzzs’ that does all the switching, live editing, multi-camera setup, encoding, streaming etc. I also have a very adept sound engineer, Sigmund Quadros who does all my live shows with me. We also have two technicians, one who comes all the way from Belapur. So, at any point of time, there are about five to six extremely talented people, multi-tasking and deeply involved in a DIY.”

The Circuit is completely un-edited. Verghese shares details and flow of the show.

On this, A Band of Boys member further shared, “Yes, it is un-edited. There are three cameras and the switching between them is done by my live editor. You will find a lot of mistakes in the show, but that makes it humane, interesting and charged. There is also the active feedback system, where people are actually giving us suggestions, commenting and telling us good things about the artists. We show these comments on the screen, hence, people also get charged up because we give direct attention to them. There are a lot of technical things used that are very cool like the chat overlay, lower thirds etc., and others, which otherwise have not been explored in the country. It’s got a very earthy, organic vibe to it. The content is quite high because we are talking about one person, their lives, career highlights and after that we are like, ‘what’s the next song?’ This is followed by a performance of the song. After the song gets over, we switch over to the comments from the audience. After this, we move on to their next career highlight.”

While Sherren is quite enthusiastic about his project, we asked him if he is planning to bring any brands onboard.

He exclaimed, “Yes, content is the new oil now and brand endorsements and placements are the way to go. YouTube revenue or anything that comes from the internet is not really very high because whatever money comes from that will be routed back into the system to make it better. But, product placement has money. There are a lot of partners in this current show, too. We have Harman Professional India – who is the main sponsor of the show. We have MusikShack, who has given us all the instruments and gears. Desi Tortillas is our snacks partner while Sagar Restaurant is our food partner. Going forward, we will have a gift partner, a travel partner etc. We will also have a video partner. Right now, I am operating on my own cameras, but I would like to take this to the next level and improve the channel quality by getting a very good video rental guy on board.”

When asked to comment on the profit, Sherrin Varghese answered, “I am not looking at any profit as whatever money has come from the sponsors has gone straight into the production. I am not looking at earning any money right now because it needs about two to three seasons to break even.”

Lastly, Sherrin doesn’t want to stop here, but have multiple expansions of the show.

“I want to do a lot of multiple expansions of the show in the future. I will be doing a series called ‘The Celebrity Circuit’ on Wednesdays at 7pm, for which I’d be calling my celebrity friends from the world of television like Narayani Shastri, Sudhanshu Pandey, Rohit Roy etc. Further, on Fridays, I will be doing a show at 11 pm on fridays called ‘Circuitry’ which will feature a one hour performance by the Live electronica and EDM artists of India”. I want to be the Jimmy Fallon of the country or a MissMalini, Sanket Bhosale from Mumbai. I haven’t gone there yet because I am waiting for the Season 1 of the musician circuit to finish.”