MUMBAI: The opening night of the 6th MixRadio Music Connects 2014 got off to a spirited start with a party hosted at the Hard Rock Café (Worli) in Mumbai on 3 November 2014.

MixRadio Music Connects 2014, to be on 4-5 November, is organised by Hong Kong based event experts Branded (Music Matters, YouTube FanFest) and Indiantelevision.com Group’s Radioandmusic.com.   The conference will feature the very best of the music industry including international and independent Indian music talent, music labels, mobile operators, streaming services, live companies and social media agencies. Along with an excellent spread of food, drinks and music, the well curated evening was attended by well-known personalities from Indian and International music fraternity.

Speaking about the jam-packed line-up of this year’s conference, Branded co-founder and CEO and Music Matters president Jasper Donat said that he expects a lot of people to be there at the two day music conference. Previously having organised “All That Matters”, one of the largest musical conferences in Singapore in May 2014, Donat added that he wished to see people from the industry and attendees from India to participate in the event. He also briefly spoke about the development of Music Matters Academy that aims to prepare young talents with the business knowledge they need to sustain in a highly competitive world of music.

Present at the occasion were Donat along with  Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari, consultant Jay Visvadeva, Indus Music Publishing director Paul Pacifico from the UK based Specific Music, British music composer and producer Kully Bhamra, Terry Mardi of Asian music publishing and Meetal Shah from Lead India.

Originally known as Nokia Music Connects, the music conference had been renamed to ‘MixRadio Music Connects’ in order to reflect an association with Microsoft and the personalised music streaming service. The theme for this year’s music forum is “shaping the digital future” and it will feature various discussions on challenges faced in the music industry and how to empower those through different ways like monetisation etc.

The highlights for this year include keynotes by MixRadio Head, Jyrki Rosenberg, a conversation with Bollywood filmmaker Imtiaz Ali and an overview of the music industry by Sony Music president Sridhar Subramanium.  All India Bakchod’s standup comic Tanmay Bhatt and YouTube sensation duo Maati Baani will also talk about their journey as artistes.