South Asian Mobile Music

EMbience — which runs Masttones.com, a site that sells South Asian mobile music around the world — has issued a release about Indian mobile music in the US.
“Now that all the big boys will soon have the same top deck music, carrier catalogs are becoming commoditized. Ethnic mobile media is growing fast and is serving a market of loyal, income disposing, consumers in the U.S. The numbers back this up with Masttones reporting close to a 30% increase in monthly sales from 2005 vs. 2004. If the walled gardens fall, niche mobile music will explode as domain expertise is hard to gain.”
An interesting part of this segment of mobile music is that successful songs are not automatically linked to big lables…four out of the top five downloaded ringtones on the Masttone service were from albums released by labels with no connection to Bollywood, and don’t have US distribution deals. They still got sold though. The market in India is very fragmented, and Masttones has signed up 600 artists and 30 publishers which operate in niche markets. There’s also a strong trend towards Bhangra, the folk-dance music of the Punjabi people played with synthesizers.
Top Selling U.S. Ringtones Song/Artist
1. 2 Dons and a B*tch Sandeep Chowta
2. Dil Luteya Jazzy B
3. Aim So High Kami K.
4. Boom Shackalak Apache Indian
5. 2K3 Nagina Remix Labh Junjua ft. Metz and Trix
6. Aa Dil Kya Mehfil Kishore Kumar
7. Aag Lag Jau Sukshinder Shinda
8. Another One Bites The Dust Queen
9. P.I.M.P. 50 Cent
10. Hollaback Girl Gwen Stefani
11. Ghostbusters Ray Parker Jr.
12. Baby Baby Sunidhi Chauhan
13. Belly Dancer First Light
14. Thank You Dido
15. Kal Ho Naa Ho Sonu Nigam
16. Lose My Breath Destiny’s Child
17. Lose Yourself Eminem
18. Feel Good Inc. Gorillaz
19. Kaho na Kaho Amir Jamal
20. Raja Pica Sunidhi Chauhan

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