The Economic Times: India’s Bharti Tele-Ventures has tied up with a music portal Soundbuzz, which has license agreements with music labels, including names like Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, Saregama, Venus, Tips among others, for providing low-priced music downloads for its Airtel broadband subscribers.
Cheap legal music downloads have arrived in India. For as little as Rs 7 ($0.15) for a Hindi song and Rs 15 ($0.33) for an international song, one can legally download digital music. With aggressive pricing, this is the first major attempt by an organised sector player to create a market for music downloads in the country.
Given that internationally legal music downloads on an average cost about $0.88-$0.99 or approximately Rs 40 per song, they would be available at half the price in India. In effect, India would become one of the lowest-priced markets for legal digital music in the world, says ET.
Branded as music@ease, initially Airtel will price the service at 30 per cent discount for two months as a launch strategy. Thereafter, the prices will be kept at Rs 10 for a local or regional song and Rs 19.99 for an international chartbuster.
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