and I am happy we pivoted because we realised we are far more passionate about Pakistani music than we ever were about Pakistani drama serials,' Bajwa revealed. Eventually, he decided to give Faisal a call and the team decided to turn to music instead and Bajwa drew up a plan to get it going. Still, Bajwa and his team weren't too quick to give up on the initial plan until the grind became impossible to bear. 'Everyone and their phuppa is doing TV, think music! No one is doing that' he told us.' 'During this time however, we met with Faisal Sherjan, Jang Group's Chief Strategy Officer, who took a liking to us, and we to him, and from day one he urged us to do music instead. 'Most of them asked for absurd amounts of money,' Bajwa explained. Two years later, Bajwa and his team were still knocking their heads against TV networks but to no avail. Not your ordinary geeks with Macbooks, this is the Patari team revolutionising Pakistani music - via Facebook 'We thought up the idea about three years ago during a caffeine induced discussion at Gloria Jeans, and a four-month sprint of coding later, we were pitching it to TV networks with blue-eyed naivety,' he said. Bajwa went on to explain that initially the plan was to create an online portal for Pakistani drama serials. 'The journey towards Patari is littered with sweat, blood, tears and failure,' Khalid Bajwa, one of the co-founders of Patari, told.

So how did the Patari team achieve the tall task of creating a possible game changer? By then, the website will be open for everyone to use. The website currently boasts a collection of 600 artists and 20,000 songs, which are expected to grow to 40,000 soon. via FacebookĬurrently running its beta version and only accessible through invites, Patari boasts an impressive collection of Pakistani music from over the decades.įeaturing musicians ranging from Muhammad Ali Shahki and Bunny to the Sabri Brothers and local indie musicians, Patari fills the gaping hole left by the industry's inability to connect fans and bands.

While the US and UK have Spotify, and India has Saavn, Pakistan now has music streaming website Patari, which has recently gone viral on social media.Ī screenshot of the website. However, a new arrival on the market may turn things around. When rummaging through their old collections of music cassettes and CDs amounts to nothing, they resort to the online streaming experience - only if they aren’t put off immediately by the poorly developed websites that offer the service. Record labels languish, the ban on Youtube remains unrevoked, and live concerts are a rare occurrence. Having long suffered a slow decline, Pakistan’s music industry has all but died.

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