Coke Studio Pakistan is both a TV series (launched 2008) and a musical format the show invented and codified. Each episode presents one song, arranged by a house band (guitar, bass, drums, keys, sometimes string quartet) around a featured artist drawn from Pakistan's qawwali, Sufi, folk and ghazal traditions. The house-band-plus-featured-artist template runs 10-15 pieces on stage. Mixes are dry, camera work fixates on fingers and faces, and the release is simultaneously to TV and YouTube. The format has been copied globally (Coke Studio India, Coke Studio Bangla, Coke Studio Africa) and its Season 14 'Pasoori' (2022) is the most viewed South Asian music video of the decade.

Rohail Hyatt (formerly of Vital Signs) created and produced the first six seasons (2008-13) under Coca-Cola Pakistan's sponsorship. Season 1's roster — Ali Azmat, Shafqat Amanat Ali, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — set the pattern. Season 3's 'Alif Allah (Jugni)' (Arif Lohar & Meesha Shafi, 2010) became the first Coke Studio Pakistan song to cross borders on YouTube. Strings' Bilal Maqsood took over as producer 2015-17, then Xulfi (Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan, formerly of Call) from 2018 onward. Under Xulfi, Season 14 introduced Ali Sethi and Shae Gill's 'Pasoori' (February 2022), which peaked at #17 on the Billboard Global 200 and now sits above 900 million YouTube views.

The standard structure is: short house-band intro; a qawwali or ghazal singer's free-time alap; band entry with mid-tempo groove; a chorus call-and-response between featured artist and backing chorus; a folk-instrument solo (rabab, sitar) in the second half. 'Tajdar-e-Haram' (Atif Aslam, 2015) is the reference arrangement — Sabri Brothers' 1980 qawwali original condensed into a 7-minute band-plus-vocal reading. 'Pasoori' (2022) reroutes the format through reggaeton-style 808 kicks and a dhol pulse, with Sethi's ghazal-inflected vocal alternating with Gill's clean pop chorus.

Ali Sethi & Shae Gill 'Pasoori' (Season 14, 2022) — the international peak. Then Atif Aslam 'Tajdar-e-Haram' (Season 8, 2015), and Arif Lohar & Meesha Shafi 'Alif Allah / Jugni' (Season 3, 2010) as the format's earlier breakthrough.

'Pasoori' means 'trouble' or 'difficulty' in Punjabi/Urdu, and Sethi has said the song is about the political friction between Pakistan and India — he had originally wanted to duet with Indian singer Arooj Aftab, but the political situation made that impossible, so he chose the then-unknown Shae Gill from Instagram. Coke Studio Bangla launched in 2022 as the Bangladesh parallel, produced by Warfaze's Ibrahim Ahmed Kamal.