01
New arrangements every week
Every song a contestant chose had to be rewritten for them — a new key to suit their voice, a shorter length to fit the show, and parts written out for the band.
Season 2 · 2025 — 2026
PakistanIdol
Music Producer and mentor across the season — a new arrangement for every song the finalists sang, written for a live band and a deadline that never moved.
Music ProducerMentorArrangerLive band
What the job actually is
What the job actually is.
02
Played live, not to a track
He pushed the show to use a real band instead of backing tracks, so the singers had musicians responding to them on stage.
03
Sitting with the singers
Writing the music is half the job. The rest is sitting with a nervous nineteen-year-old the night before a show until they can sing it.
- Role
- Music Producer & Mentor
- Judges
- Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Zeb Bangash, Fawad Khan, Bilal Maqsood
- Host
- Shafaat Ali
- Broadcast
- Geo TV, PTV Home, Green Entertainment, Express, A-Plus, Begin
From the stage
From the season.
His own performances, and the finalists singing arrangements written for them. Click any frame to watch.
Idol Online · 2020
A talent hunt built
from nothing.
No sponsor, no stage. Just a phone and a song.
When the country shut down during Covid, live music stopped. Venues closed and young singers had nowhere to audition.
So Shuja started his own talent hunt online. You recorded yourself at home on your phone and sent it in. There was no sponsor and no television money behind it — he set it up himself so that new singers would still be heard.
Thousands of people entered in the first week. He judged it with Ali Zafar, Umair Jaswal and Ahmed Jahanzeb.
5,000+
Auditions in week one
0
Brands behind it
4
Judges — Zafar, Jaswal, Jahanzeb, Haider
The same work,
taught directly.
What he does for sixteen finalists on a national stage, taught to anyone who wants to learn it.