page_title: Pakistani pop music
section_title: The heyday of Pakistan pop music: 1990–1999
hierarchical_section_title: Pakistani pop music / New wave of music and New genres (1980-2000s) / The heyday of Pakistan pop music: 1990–1999
caption_attribution_description: English: Over the last one year both the lead singers for Strings have worked closely with Etihad in Pakistan for various projects including performance at a fundraiser for Development in Literacy at Eitehad Runway and giving out relief good in flood affecting areas for 2010.
context_page_description: Pakistani pop music refers to popular music forms in Pakistan. Pakistani pop is a mixture of traditional Pakistani classical music and western influences of jazz, rock and roll, hip hop and disco sung in various languages of Pakistan, including Urdu. The popularity of music is based on the individual sales of a single, viewership of its music video or the singer's album chart positions. Apart from within Pakistan, Pakistani pop music has also achieved an influential following and popularity in neighboring countries and is listened by members of the Pakistani diaspora, especially in the Middle East, Europe and North America.
  Pakistani pop music is attributed to have given birth to the genre in the South Asian region with Ahmed Rushdi's song "Ko Ko Korina" in 1966. Pakistani pop is thus closely related to Indian pop music, as well as Bollywood music and Bangladeshi rock. Subgenres of Pakistani pop music include Qawwali, Pakistani rock, Pakistani hip hop, and disco.
context_section_description: With the success of Vital Signs and other bands, pop/rock music significantly helped to list pop music as well. The primetime reception on NTM in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad as NTM broadcast a show titled Music Channel Charts. The rock music continued to be appreciated by the public and an hour-length show that showcased music videos for various artists in a countdown format. When people started getting acquainted with the show's format, amateur bands and singers taped their own videos and sent them to be aired. With competition rising and only a few minutes dedicated to a single video, pop and rock musicians from all over the country were being recognised for their work.
  The show made upcoming artists such as rapper Fakhre Alam, Danish Rahi, Fringe Benefit (the debut album Tanhai was recorded and mixed by Tahir Gul Hasan at his recording studios in Karachi), Strings, Junoon, Aamir Saleem, Aamir Zaki, and Haroon Rashid and Faakhir Mehmood from Awaz household names. The show became the trailblazer and many followed its footstep. Video Countdown (which later became Video Count Down Zabardast Zabar Duss/10) started on PTV and Video Junction (VJ) was one of its kind on NTM which started after the closure of MCC. As PTV became international in 1992 with the launch of PTV2, it opened the international arena for Pakistani Pop artists. More and More International TV channels (especially from across the borders) became visible in Pakistan through satellite. Pakistani artists started making their ways to MTV India and Channel V in the late 1990s.  and overshadow every effort the Pakistani counterpart would make to highlight the talents within.
  The beginning of FM radio in the mid-90s made Pakistani pop more available. People started enjoying the shades of Paki Pop n rock in their cars.
  Recording companies like EMI Pakistan, Pepsi Pakistan Inc. and Sound Master started taking note of the new and rising stars. They started signing contracts with bands including Strings, Vital Signs, Junoon, Benjamin Sister, and Awaz who would later become iconic pop-rock bands. At this time, various rock/pop bands earned a lot of recognition abroad after Vital Signs made its debut international concert in the United States in 1993.
  Abrar-ul-Haq, since his debut with Billo De Ghar (1995), became known as the "King of Pakistani Pop", having sold over 40.3 million albums worldwide.
  Hadiqa Kiani made her debut in Adnan Sami & Zeba Bakhtiar starrer "Sargam" in 1995 which became a phenomenal hit and the music album of the movie was a chartbuster in Lollywood Top 10 (PTV), Yeh Hai Filmi Dunya (NTM) and FM channels. But Hadiqa continued her music career more as a pop artist instead of a playback. Her albums "Raaz, Rung and Roshni" sold millions and made her an ultimate female pop star after Nazia Hassan.  In 1997, Hadiqa became the second international female singer in the world to be signed by Pepsi Pakistan.
  In 1999, following the Kargil War, all Indian channel broadcasts were limited or banned in Pakistan and after Pervaiz Musharraf's coup d'état, the media was privatised. To cater to the needs of thousands who watched the Indian channels with regularity, programmes were broadcast to match the Indian content. Seeing this as an opportunity, bands returned on the music scene and started producing videos with much richer content. In 2002–03, Ghazanfar Ali, producer and CEO of the Indus Media Group started his very first venture into the music industry with Indus Music, a channel dedicated to music following the formats used by Western Music Channels. The channel started as a part of the Indus Vision channel and was later started as a separate channel in 2003. With nothing much to watch than a few Pakistani channels, the youngsters in the country would settle in for Indus Music and would become interested in music once again. In 2006 Indus TV Network in an agreement with MTV Intn;l converted Indus Music into MTV Pakistan which continued till 2011 to again become Indus Music.
  Rock music continued to gather popularity in the country, as more singers and band
caption: In the 1990s, the Strings gained a lot of publicity for their rock/pop music genre.
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