Music To India’s Ears

High-end phones in India are coming preloaded with songs, a common move around the globe designed to increase usage of mobile phones for listening to music — and hopefully to more mobile music sales. India is one of the countries where mobile music is already poised to take over as the majority revenue driver for the music industry…”According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the mobile music industry (pre-loaded and downloads put together) in India is worth nearly Rs 500 crore (US$108.9 million), and is on the verge of overtaking the legal, conventional music industry.” The conventional music industry is worth 700 crore and expected to grow to 720 crore by the end of next year, but mobile music “is growing at the rate of 40-50%”, so is likely to overtake the conventional industry some time next year.
Most of the music is international, but Hindi music is growing and regional music is likely to be included soon too.
There is some discussion over who should pay for the songs preloaded onto handsets — some in the mobile industry argue that it is advertising the songs and if anyone should pay it’s the record companies for the advertising. That’s not how it works, of course, “Nokia, which has a tie-up with T-Series , buys out the rights for songs, while Motorola pays a one-time royalty fee to music companies”. I think the argument from the mobile industry described here is a bit ingenuous — the songs are promotional, but they’re promoting the music capabilities of the phones rather than the songs. If preloading songs really was an effective way to promote a band the music industry could be encouraged to pay for that.

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