Network18 owned In.com, has shut down its music streaming offering. All traffic to in.com/music now takes you to a 404 page, and the same is the case with the music player that was launched in May 2012 (Hat tip: Karthik Srinivasan). Speaking with MediaNama, Web18 CEO Lakshmi Narasimhan said that "There is a cost to content, and at this point we felt there are other areas we should focus on. We constantly add and remove services from in.com and this is just a part of it," in response to a query on whether music was making money for in.com. Narasimhan also said that in.com has added several local services recently, but was evasive when we asked him which. Note that Web18 had laid off 50-70 employees as part of a restructuring exercise at the group earlier this year and most of those let go were from the content team, and in.com was significantly impacted. In.com's offering was competing against Dhingana, Saavan and Times Internet's Gaana, all of which have mobile applications and paid options, while in.com had neither. The now shut down service used to let users sort through its collection on the basis of album or artist and had songs in 10 languages apart from Hindi. It also let you listen to online radio stations and even play songs to suit your mood. The music service also listed out top songs, top albums and top radio, apart from select playlists and had integrated music videos into its service. When it launched, In.com was supposed to be a portal offering multiple services…
