When we turn on a television set, we get a range of channels to keep us informed and entertained for all the 7 days of a week. When we browse the internet, an ocean of information floods at a click of a mouse. I guess we are just way to lucky to live in this era of advanced technology. These media plays a very crucial role in our day to day life in shaping our beliefs, perceptions, ideas, values and our behaviour in the society. It is a powerful medium of education and entertainment in numerous ways. But did we ever stop for a while and think what impact exactly is the media leaving on you, me, our family, on the coming generation and the society?

Our society is rampant with corruption, crime, etc. and many a times media plays the role of adding fuel to aggressive behaviour, violence, sex, obscenity etc. however more over in the younger generation.

The following two posts will deal with such issues. It is to be noted that the following posts are analysis of five research papers each post. The first post will be a brief analysis on the effects of violence in media and the second on the sexual content in media. Each post has a bibliography of the research papers followed for this project.

23 October 2013

Market for Music in India

The internet is known for the convenience and comfort it brings at our fingertips. Be it shopping, travel, insurance or food, the web empowers us to do all these things with a simple click. While online shopping is just taking off in India, online music distribution has been around for some time and has grown over the past 5 years. Digital consumption, distribution and availability of the catalogue in the digital space are only a logical progression and evolution of the Indian music market. Film music, including Bollywood and regional film music, accounts for 67% of music sales in India. Film producers typically create an album for a film and license the exploitation rights to a music company. The acquisition costs for these music rights can be prohibitive and are typically 25% to 30% of a film’s total cost. Music companies bear the entire risk for an album’s success, which is closely linked to the film’s success. Because of the dominance of film music, the Indian music industry is less focused on developing stand-alone artists than in other countries. Music companies have diversified into film production, edutainment content for children and non-fi lm music. They are also entering into artist management to increase non-film music revenues and are exploring the concert promotion business to meet a growing demand for live entertainment.
Already being touted as the “iTunes of India”, Flipkart's “Flyte” platform launched in February offers users the option of legally downloading songs for as little as Rs 6 a track while albums are available for download starting at Rs 25. What's more is that these downloads are Digital Right Management free implying that there are no access related restrictions on the use of digital content after purchase and one can download and play it on Winamp, Wndows Media Player, iTunes, PC or home theatre system and so on. Though Flyte has widened the pool of choice for music lovers to get their music online, it remains to be seen how the site will manage to fob off fierce competition from free online streaming sites, pirated music download portals as well as the throbbing mobile music download segment even as it hopes that its “easy-to-buy-music-at-attractive-price-point” strategy will help convert the freeloader mindset to the willing-to-pay category.
Online streaming music portals for Indian music such as gaana.com, dhingana.com and saavn.com are some of the popular players in this space in India.  In 2011, the Indian music industry achieved a 19 per cent year-on-year decline in sales of physical music which was compensated by a significant jump of 24 per cent year-on-year in digital music consumed, according to a FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2012. However, interestingly 90 per cent of the total digital music sales have come from the mobile segment. Last year also provided users viable options of music consumption through different digital platforms such as pay per download, unlimited music streaming and subscription based music services. With the emergence of these digital platforms and greater channels of music discovery, exposure to newer genres of music is also picking up, nurturing demand for non-film genres such as devotional and classical songs, though there's still a long way to go, believe some users.
Apart from technological innovation, creativity and innovation in packaging and marketing is also gaining centre stage for these music websites in a bid to stay in the game. For instance, the website iMusti.com is offering an “advertisement free musical experience for 7 days” by signing up or login in through Facebook followed by a paid model if the customer wishes to continue.
According to a FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2012, the Indian music industry achieved a 19 % year-on-year decline in sales of physical music which was compensated by a significant jump of 24 % year-on-year in digital music consumed last year. Physical sales of music continue to slide with digital music consumption on a steady rise. This phenomenon was more pronounced in the urban centres where mobile and Internet penetration is higher; however regional markets were less affected.
In India, the idea of online music started gaining a foothold around 2006-07, when music companies such as Saregama HMV, T Series and Sony BMG started digitizing their tracks, the online music market also started growing. During 2007, Saregama forayed into Hindi music download business with competitive price tag of Rs.10 per track download. In April 2008, Motorola attempted to tap the delivery of music content on the Internet and mobile through acquisition of Asian online and mobile firm- Soundbuzz. However,Motorola closed down its Soundbuzz’s business within a year (May 2009). Meanwhile, illegal- free downloads of music continued on large scale through various sites and choked the growth of early entrants like Saregama. Later in October 2010, Hungama Digital had launched music download service, and recently Flipkart’s Flyte went live. Others such as imusti, Saavn, Gaana, Dhingana, Hungama and NH7, have joined the streaming league recently.

Consumption of online music has seen consistent growth during the last 2-3 years and mobile presents itself as an even more exciting domain, which has grown incredibly well. The explosion of smartphones and high speed 2G and 3G connections in urban markets has largely contributed to this. According to a survey by Neilsen released in June this year, there are 27 Million Smartphone users in Urban India across 1 lakh+ towns. Currently, mobile contributes around 85-90 % to the total digital music consumption in India.


In download businesses, besides  bandwidth constraints, unavailability of micro-payment tools is a big challenge, typically to enable a song download from Flyte or Hungama, consumers need to pay around Rs.10-15. And to pay such small amount it is unlikely that consumer would use his/her credit or debit card. However, emergence of mobile based IMPS payment could solve this payment hassle to some extent.
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