Soundbuzz to launch prepaid music download cards

Category: VAS | No Comments | Posted on May 19, 2006

Soundbuzz India is gearing to launch a pre-paid music download card in the Indian market before end of this year. The prepaid music cards will serve as an alternative payment option for downloading songs online.

Mandar Thakur, general manager of Soundbuzz in India

“India is predominantly a mobile music market, with low but rapidly growing broadband penetration. While in developed nations, digital music revenues that touched $1.1 billion in 2005 were divided 60:40 between online and mobile, the situation is the opposite in India.

More than 85% of the digital music revenues (over Rs 400 crore) come from the mobile sector alone. This ratio is in for a change with broadband development already in the process,”

How the online service would differ from similar full-song-download services launched by Hutch and Airtel on mobiles.

While a full track download on the mobile network would cost Rs 20 (like in the case of Hutch), in addition to per KB data download charges that would differ from one service provider to another, buying music online works out much cheaper.

“It’s almost half at Rs 10 or Rs 12 per track. This apart, the download is faster and the quality of the song is superior at 3MB to 4MB per song as compared to 1MB to 1.5MB on the mobile network,” says an official from one of the Indian music labels.

On the distribution strategy, Soundbuzz plans to associate with consumer durable chains besides those in the music retailing business like MusicWorld etc.

Headquartered in Singapore, Soundbuzz is a online and mobile music company. Operating in 13 markets in Asia, with an online music store in the US, the company registers monthly sales of over 200,000 encrypted music downloads and 2 million ringtone downloads. India will be the third country to see the launch of this music download card by Soundbuzz after Australia and Singapore.

India’s broadband and internet subscriber base in 2005 were 3 million and 6 million, respectively. This is expected to go up to 9 million and 18 million in 2007, and 20 million and 40 million, respectively by 2010.

What are the implications of this on mobile VAS? If it succeeds, the music download card will establish prepaid cards as an alternative payment mechanism to operator billing for mobile VAS.

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