(Preethi J and Nikhil Pahwa) Legalised online music retailing is taking off in India: even as Hungama has launched its online store for music, video and mobile downloads, handset maker Nokia India has set up its own store Music.Nokia.co.in and a pan-India retail infrastructure to support it. The store has 3 million international, Bollywood and regional soundtracks. In an interview with Medianama, Jasmeet Gandhi, Head of Nokia India's music division, discusses how music is an essential part of Nokia's services strategy and going "beyond devices". Gandhi talks about how he plans to get scale, the delivery model, the delay and "giving back" to the music ecosystem. What is the purpose behind Nokia launching a music store in India? Not only India, music is a very central part of the entire services strategy of Nokia for a very simple reason - devices keep on evolving. We are going closer and closer towards the form factor of, say, a PC experience, right from speaker quality, memory to screen size and processor speeds. The next logical step is to invest in platforms which will help enhance the experience of the device itself. Is the purpose to help you to sell devices or add another revenue stream? The entire services strategy is based on the fact that we will definitely want to the extract the value out of services beyond the device. If you look at it, today, every device category goes through its own curve of normalisation and cycle of innovations become shorter…
