Coke Studio Pakistan has rolled out Nu.WAV, a new music platform built around a younger generation of artists working outside the show’s traditional format. The first of six planned songs began releasing this month, pairing established names with newer talent discovered through an open submission process.
Background: Two Decades of Coke Studio
Coke Studio Pakistan has run for 15 seasons since it launched in 2008, producing close to 350 songs and building a reputation as one of the country’s most recognisable cultural exports. Sami Wahid, general manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan at The Coca-Cola Company, has described the show as having grown into something bigger than music, calling it a source of national pride that carries Pakistani sound to listeners in over 180 countries.
Nu.WAV marks a departure from that established format. Rather than continuing with the show’s usual season structure, Coca-Cola built a separate platform meant to reflect how younger musicians actually make and share music today, often independently and from home setups rather than through big studio productions.
Details: How Nu.WAV Actually Works
The project is led by Kamal Khan, a filmmaker and longtime Coke Studio collaborator, and centers on six songs: Maheya, Dil, Rangeen, Qasam, Shabnam and Ae Deewan-e-Dil. Together, according to the people behind the project, the tracks are meant to form a single portrait of Pakistani identity, moving from personal ambition toward a sense of belonging.
The artist lineup mixes familiar names like Asim Azhar, Hasan Raheem, Young Stunners and Shae Gill with newer acts including Aaryan SDQ, Afusic, Izz Chughtai, Maanu, Sabaat Batin and Zoha Waseem. Production duties are split across six producers: Abdullah Kasumbi, Ali Soomro, Jokhay, Rovalio, Talal Qureshi and Umair.
A good chunk of the emerging talent came through a dedicated Nu.WAV submission portal, where thousands of singers, dancers and other artists from across Pakistan sent in their own work. Curators then picked the strongest submissions to fold into the project, giving unsigned artists a real shot at national exposure alongside names people already know.
Quotes From the Team Behind It
Wahid framed the platform around a generation that doesn’t need a traditional studio to make music. “These are people who grew up making music in bedrooms and putting it out themselves,” he said. “The platform had to reflect that.”
Khan has said the goal is to hand artists real creative control rather than fitting them into one house style, letting each song carry its own sound and visual identity instead of following a single directorial vision the way past Coke Studio seasons often did.
Impact: What This Means for Pakistani Music
Coke Studio has a habit of turning a single song into something the whole country ends up talking about, and not always kindly. A reworked cover of the 1966 classic Ko Ko Korina drew real backlash in an earlier season even as plenty of listeners defended it, which says a lot about how closely people watch what this brand releases. Nu.WAV betting on newer, less familiar artists means it won’t have that built-in name recognition working in its favour audiences will have to be won over on the music itself.
For the artists involved, the exposure that comes from a Coca-Cola-backed platform is hard to match through independent releases alone, and it could open doors for several of the lesser-known names on the lineup. Regionally, it also keeps Pakistan’s music scene visible against Coke Studio’s other franchises, including the long-running Coke Studio India, which built its own following through a similar mix of classical and contemporary artists after debuting on MTV India in 2011.
Conclusion: What’s Next
The remaining songs from Nu.WAV’s first batch are set to roll out over the coming weeks, with each release expected to come with its own artist and production details rather than dropping all at once. How audiences respond to the shift away from Coke Studio’s traditional season format will likely shape whether Nu.WAV becomes a recurring fixture alongside the main show or a one-off experiment.
FAQs
Who is the owner of Coke Studio Pakistan?
Coke Studio Pakistan is owned and funded by The Coca-Cola Company, which has backed the show since it launched in 2008. Creative production has changed hands over the years, starting with founding producer Rohail Hyatt and later moving to Strings’ Bilal Maqsood and Faisal Kapadia, and more recently to producer Xulfi, while Coca-Cola’s Pakistan and Afghanistan division continues to oversee the brand and business side of the platform.
Is Coke Studio from Pakistan?
Not originally. The Coke Studio format actually began in Brazil in 2007 as a project blending different Brazilian musical styles, before Coca-Cola adapted the concept for Pakistan in 2008. Pakistan’s version went on to become by far the most successful and widely recognised edition of the format, which is now also run in countries including India, and is often the one people mean when they refer to Coke Studio generally.
Is Coke Studio Pakistan better than India?
That’s genuinely a matter of taste rather than something with a factual answer. Coke Studio Pakistan tends to get more international attention and is generally seen as having built a more consistent identity around fusion and folk-influenced sounds, while Coke Studio India has leaned more on Bollywood ties and classical Indian music traditions. Fans of each version usually point to different strengths, and neither has some official measure that settles the comparison.
