Airtel Launches Songcatcher For Instant Download Of Music

Bharti Airtel has launched Songcatcher, a service which allows users to download songs instantly without having to search for them. How does it work? On hearing a song, the user dials 393 and holds the phone to the speaker. The music recognition software, powered by South Korean firm SKC&C, identifies the song, and the user gets an SMS with the song name which, if accepted, can be downloaded. According to Kee Jin Son, Director Overseas Operations for SKC&C, this is an exclusive deal with Airtel in India and they will not be providing this service to any other operator here.
How much does it cost? Rs. 2 for the search and Rs. 15 for the song. Now that’s a marked change from the 646 voice portal services at Rs.6/min for access and Rs.15/song for download. I asked Harish Gandhi, VP VAS & NPD (Mobility), Bharti Airtel about whether this will impact revenues. He said that by bringing the cost of access down, they’re trying to grow the market. Currently VAS contributes around 10% of the revenues, of which music is a sizable amount.
Airtel is also planning to double its music library from 25,000 songs to 50,000, and around 75mil songs have been downloaded between 2000-2006. The Songcatcher service, however, is only available for Hello Tunes at present, though they intend to expand it to other music content like ringtones and full track downloads. I think ringtones and full track downloads would be better since Songcatcher targets the impulsive need for a song – if I wanted to download it, more often than not it would be to hear it for myself, rather than set it as a ringback tone. Just a thought…Airtel pays a revenue share or a fixed amount for a library of songs, depending on the deal; how about getting users to generate their own ringback tones (voice or music), and maybe even holding a competition for the funniest ringback tone to drive usage?

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