The film starts off with Joseph “Joe” Mascarenhas (Arjun Rampal) being introduced to the audience. Joe is now a judge at a successful reality show and the working partner of Club Bar & Blues, where he often meets his other friend from the band Magik, Kedar "KD" Zaveri (Purab Kohli), better known as Killer Drummer. As the story goes on, KD narrates how Aditya “Adi” Shroff (Farhan Akhtar), Magik's lead singer, left the city and its comforts due to a nightmare haunting him and a painful experience, and has been living for five years in Cherrapunji, a village near Shillong, Meghalaya. Jiah Sharma (Shraddha Kapoor), a young music programmer, lives with her father, Pandit Vibhuti Sharma (Kumud Mishra), who was once a great Sarod player, and is referred to by Jiah affectionately as “Baba”. She finds that a young boy, Uday Brijkishore Mishra (Shashank Arora), has come over to Baba, and wants to lear n music and the Sarod from him. However, since he is too scared to even listen to how perfectly Uday is playing the Sarod due to memories of his late son instantly being triggered, Panditji leaves the room. Jiah convinces Uday to continue his struggles and assures him that his harsh days would come to an end. Uday also learns about Jiah's singing talent, and plays a Sarod composition of the song Jiah recorded. This composition is recorded by Jiah in a CD which she asks Uday to give to the Club Bar & Blues studio, headed by Joe, little realizing that giving the CD would bring about a huge twist of fate and also reunite band members of Magik in the process. Meanwhile, Adi is visited by Joe and KD on his birthday, along with Adi's wife Sakshi (Prachi Desai) and Joe's wife Debbie (Shahana Goswami). Adi also finds his son, Rob, who he has named after Magik's only late member, Rob Nancy (Luke Kenny), sleeping in the car and wakes him up. Soon after, as they gather toge ther, Joe and KD find Adi's poetry in his diary, and ask him if he has created a tune, to which he agrees to play it. The next morning, however, a free talk between the trio swiftly develops into a past hunting argument, and it is soon revealed that Adi is tormented by the failure of his music label in Mumbai, which, along with the money invested, also took away a young aspiring artist's life. KD blames Adi for trying to run away, while Adi ends up accusing Joe of going money-centric. However, the argument soon ceases, and Joe asks Adi to calm down as it is his birthday. They finally reconcile after an adventure. Sakshi asks Adi to return to Mumbai, but he refuses. The next day, Adi bids a goodbye to his friend, and KD promises to return with Adi's bike and friends in three days. The film flashes back to Magik's old days. Adi returns to his old life and recalls how a young boy, Rahul Sharma (Priyanshu Painyuli), wanted to give him a demo tape of his recordings, but A di's losses and rude behaviour towards him forced the young boy to commit suicide. He still hasn't gotten over the nightmares, but soon also stands to lose his hard-gained self-help world in the village when his cooperative, his farm, and his school, all catch fire. Left with nothing, he travels to Cherrapunji, where Jiah meets him. Adi falls unconscious when Jiah tends to him. The next day, KD discovers him, egging him on to return to Mumbai and try moving on. Uday and Jiah are called by Joe to the studio, where Jiah meets Adi and later performs her song live in the studio. Magik members find the song really good and suggest Jiah sing in an upcoming concert, but telling a lie to Baba on that pretext shames Jiah into recalling how Panditji criticized modern day music, calling it a destroyer of the soulfulness and purity of the art. She runs away from the concert. A scuffle between Joe and KD soon brings up truth to the surface, and Adi and his friends eventually take a shock ing retreat when they come to know that Panditji is Jiah's father, and that Rahul, the boy who committed suicide, is Jiah's brother. Amidst a highly tense atmosphere, while Joe refuses to cooperate with Adi and KD in their thoughts of apologizing to Jiah, the story flashes back to five years earlier when Rahul tried to attack Adi. The resulting fight attracted a threat from Rahul, following which Rahul committed suicide by the time Adi and KD heard his CD and decided to call him. Jiah learns of the truth and breaks off all contact with Magik and Uday, and recalls how Baba chided Rahul for ruining the art of Indian music despite his pleadings and valid excuses. Adi learns of some problem in the town in Meghalaya where he had been living, and this causes a rift between him and Sakshi, who is upset that he does not have time for her. Adi lands at the airport, where he encounters Jiah again, but they are unable to get over Rahul's death. Finally, after some hard thinking, Ji ah visits Adi in the village, and convinces him to stop brooding over Rahul's suicide, stating that he was so dejected with life that he ended up messing with Adi's life as well. Adi visits the camp but there is not much funding available, so Joe and KD come up with the idea of organizing a rock concert with some known bands to raise collective funds. However, as soon as Mahender, the state welfare board chief, who had earlier gotten into an egoistic argument with Adi, comes to know of this, he orders an ambush on the concert venue, thus ruining everything. That very day, Panditji gets a call from a news reporter and is shocked to learn that Jiah is at the venue of the attack. During an angry conversation, Jiah vents out to Baba that it was he who had killed Rahul by not providing him the motivation that he needed badly in life. Panditji breaks down, and drops the phone. Meanwhile, a contestant from Joe's reality show, Mann Jyot (Dinesh Kumar), brings some equipment as a replacement of the broken setup. The concert becomes a success even as Adi gets Jiah to overcome her fears and apprehensions. The village recovers from its crisis as Mahender is forced to release funds, and Magik reunites eventually, while Uday is a new member and Jiah becomes a singing sensation.