International Music Videos On Hungama; Why Download? EMI

Do YOU buy music videos from the Internet? I don’t, but Hungama thinks you do and wants to make a business out of it. Hungama will allow users to download international music videos to their phones and PCs. International music videos available are of artists such as Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, Michael Learns to Rock, Richard Marx, Queen, Roxette among other from EMI Music and Warner.

The company claims that popular video downloads for this month include Sleeping Child & The Actor by Michael Learns to Rock, Fix You by Coldplay, ‘We are the champions’ by Queen, ‘Right here waiting’ by Richard Marx, ‘A beautiful lie’ by 30 seconds to Mars. Not many contemporary videos there, and it appears there are several closet MLTR fans in India. Hungama already has Bollywood and regional Indian music videos.

Pricing

Hungama has a general pricing model for all types of downloads from its site including music tracks, ringtones, videos and mobile wallpapers. The same will also be applicable for the international music videos as well. Users can download unlimited content for Rs 99 per month. For Rs 20 users can download a mix of 4 videos, music tracks, ringtones or wallpapers. A single download would cost Rs 10.

Why Would I and Why Wouldn’t I Buy A Music Video From Hungama

Music videos are primarily made to sell respective albums and songs, not the video itself. More interactive content on mobile phones like games become monotonous and boring after a while, music videos are just to watch. One would rather download the music legally from the mobile at the same price, given the condition that a friend can’t Bluetooth it over, or the Internet at home is not working, and the cyber cafe in my neighbourhood has a different choice of music. A typical India consumer likes music for for free.

For a music lover the video will take up extra space on his mobile that he would rather have filled with more music. The one reason a user might download a music video would be because he is getting a video from Hungama at the same price as the audio file.

Hungama-EMI Partnership

Earlier, Hungama signed a content distribution deal with EMI Music, a music company with record labels such as Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol Records, Parlophoneand Virgin Records. According to the agreement, Hungama will be in charge of distribution of digital music from EMI Music and EMI’s licensing partner Warner Music Group for four countries – India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Hungama will distribute full length music tracks, videos, mobile wallpapers, live concert footage, ringtones, caller ring back tones etc through Internet and over the mobile – its recently launched online music store Hungama.com as well as the store it deployed for telco BSNL earlier.