The sound of digital music

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Soundscape, If you can’t beat them, join them. After years of battling illegal downloads, the international music industry has joined the enemy, offering more and more music for sale online. <br /><br />Last December, Internet music downloads overtook CD sales in the UK. <br /><br />Is this the end of the music store as we know it? Will music consumption in India be similarly affected? Vaishnavi C Sekhar finds out.<br /><br />The album’s not yet out and no vinyl single is on sale at the local record store. Yet, Coldplay’s new song, Speed of Sound, achieved 100,000 in sales in its first week and shot straight to No 8 on the Billboard chart, becoming the first UK band after the Beatles to debut in the US Top Ten.<br /><br />It’s the magic of the digital down load and it’s changing the way music is sold and consumed around the world.<br /><br /> After years of battling online ‘piracy’, the international music industry has...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal">... finally joined the enemy offering more and more music for sale online.<br /><br />Music fans downloaded over 200 million tracks in 2004 in the US and Europe up from 20 million in 2003. There are now 230 official websites, up from only 50 a year ago (a popular one is iTunes where a single track costs 99 cents). <br /><br />Riding on the rage for pocket-size digital music players like the iPod the trend is single-handedly resusci tating the pop single. <br /><br />In the first few months of 2005, album sales continued to fall in the US but individual track downloads rose by a whopping 148%. “It’s about instant gratification,’’ pronounced Digital Music News. <br /><br />While South-East Asia too is moving rapidly to online music (tech crazy Japan leads the way), what is exploding in India is ringtones (see box). <br /><br /><script language="javascript">doweshowbellyad=0; </script></div> <div align="center" style="position:relative; left: 0"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" align="center" border="0" width="71.0%"> <colgroup> <col width="100.0%" /> </colgroup> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100.0%" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="" valign:="" top="" background-color:="" white=""> <div class="Normal" style="" text-align:="" center=""><span style="" font-size:="" font-weight:="" bold="">Lord of the Rings</span></div> <div class="Normal"><br />India’s iPod is the singing mobile. Demand for ringtones and call backs (the song you hear when you call a cell) is exploding here a leading portal says around 180,000 tones are downloaded every month and the market is growing by over 100%. <br /><br />It’s easy to monetise and has even put a price on the Indian single Rs 7 to Rs 15 a tune—albeit by default. The record breaker? <br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dhoom</span>, which has been downloaded over 1.5 million times. <br /><br />Already, says media mogul Pritish Nandy, some movie producers are dividing up their music rights allocating digital separately to maximise their profit from ringtones. <br /><br />“New technological platforms are changing the business,’’ he says. <br /><br />Though cellular operators retain most of the revenue, this might change soon to fall in line with international practice. <br /><br />Ringtones now account for 10% of the world’s music market, generating a staggering $3 billion. <br /><br />“It’s the immediate future,’’ says Times Music’s T Suresh. <br /><br />Indeed, if the latest Samsung mobile a multimedia monster which stores 3,000 song is any indication, we may not even need that cheap iPod.</div> </td> </tr> </table></div> <div class="Normal"><br /><br />‘Non-physical’ music formats are still just...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section3"><div class="Normal">... 5% of the Rs 600-crore business, making some like Indian Music Industry (IMI) general secretary Savio d’Souza sceptical about their potential here. <br /><br />Low internet penetration and the cost of hardware like iPods means that physical for mat will continue to drive the business for some time to come, he says. <br /><br />Sony Music’s managing director Shridhar Subramaniam is more bullish. “It will happen here more quickly than anyone can anticipate and the hurdles will be regulatory, not technological,’’ he avers.<br /><br /> Agrees a website representative, “Earlier it was thought CDs would be restricted to urban markets but pirated CDs are now huge in small towns because of falling player prices.’’ <br /><br />Currently, there are very few official Indian music sites but teens and techies are hooked to free downloads, whether from websites like hindimovies.com or file sharing services (where fans share their collections across the net). <br /><br />Like 24-year-old web designer Yogesh Rangarajan who downloads or rips...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section4"><div class="Normal">... off up to 500 songs a month and only buys musicians he wants to support. <br /><br />“If international music was cheaper, I would buy it more,’’ he says. <br /><br />Downloading now fuels India’s pirated music market, estimated to make up half the total business, and the IMI has begun to crack down on websites. <br /><br />But this sue of intellectual property not withstanding, there’s no doubt that the new medium holds great promise for both artist and listener. <br /><br />Music fans can access a broader range of music companies like Times Music are adding their catalogues to iTunes to cater to the over seas Indian—or plug into a niche community, say, of percussion music fans. <br /><br />Artists can bypass big labels (sites like Mpheria sell music by smaller bands,) offering 70% of royalty...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section5"><div class="Normal">... to the artist compared to 11-12% and connect with their audience directly. <br /><br />“At a time when the music industry is only interested in a certain kind of pop music, the Net is a good platform for artists doing more experimental work,’’ says singer Shubha Mudgal, whose online music store promotes Indian artists not <br />normally found in record stores. <br /><br />Bangalore fusion-rock band <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Thermal and a Quarter</span>, for example, isn’t well known in India. <br /><br />But after putting up their albums online under an ‘open licence’, they’ve had responses from across America. <br /><br />Something that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. The great download march continues.</div> </div>