Airtel launches Easy Music

Posted on | March 26, 2006 |

Airtel in association with WiderThan has announced the launch of Airtel Easy Music, available from over one lakh plus Airtel retail outlets. This makes Airtel the largest retailer for music not only within the country but also in the world.

Jay Kim, Senior Executive Vice-President, WiderThan Co. (an affiliate of SK Telecom)

“Easy Music is a revolutionary product that has never been attempted by any mobile operator in the world.

“With the market for mobile music set to grow exponentially in India, I believe that this product is set to redefine music retailing and will be a benchmark service for all operators internationally”.

Here is how it works:

* Choose your favourite song from the music catalogue available with the retailer.

* Tell the retailer your choice.

* Retailer will just press a few keys on his phone and download a song (Hello Tunes or Ringtone) to your mobile phone. In the case of Hello Tunes you will be required to dial 674 (tollfree) to confirm acceptance of the song.

* You will also get an SMS confirming the successful download of your song.

* Finally you can pay the retailer for the song and walk out…as simple as that.

This is an important development, especially for the personalisation segment (ringtones, wallpapers). Content download revenue of GSM operators is constrained by the difficulties in GPRS enabling their users. Airtel has demonstrated the possibility of an alternative retail strategy for mobile content.

It is a win-win situation for all entities. The customer can now personalise his mobile without worrying about the technical details, the retailer receives a cut for every transaction and Airtel gains from increased base of subscribers who can now buy the content.

CIOL puts the Indian music market size at around 1890 crore. Out of this digital mobile music market is around 900 crore, which is around 47%.

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