Category: MixRadio Music Connects

Crystal Ball gazing: The biggies give their view

MUMBAI: With the digital ecosystem evolving since the last few years, the next three to five years are seen as the years of ‘quantum leap’. These were the views of a panel at the Crystal Ball session on the second day of Mix Radio Music Connects (MRMC).

The panel comprised of Gaana.com VP and business head Pawan Agarwal, HMV Saregama India head music business Adarsh Gupta, Bharti Airtel chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran, Sony MAX and Sony MIX senior executive VP and business head Neeraj Vyas and Samsung South West Asia director and head, media and cloud services Tarun Malik.

With a rise in music streaming services, visual content streaming services and music channels and companies competing for content will give more traction to these services felt the experts.

Commenting on the digital eco system, Gupta said, “It is going to take a quantum leap in the next three years; there has been immense mobile penetration and data digitisation in recent times and many digital services have been launched.”

“Since most music channels are free to air and the revenue comes only through ads, music channels have 20-25 minutes of advertisement/ trailers per hour. We need to focus on bringing music back to the audience but the music channels are here to stay,” according to Vyas.

“Music channels have a base of around 400 million people and that is the number covered by TAM. We need a lot of changes like digitization, it is the future.” he emphasized.

Agarwal added, “There are two big things that are happening right now – availability of content and a lot more awareness of the industry going faster. The number of downloads are increasing and digital is the future.”

Talking about the music industry, Chandrasekaran added, “This is the best time for the music industry.”

Malik further explained, “Personalisation is the key and differentiation should go beyond just music. The services must be more centric and personalised in terms of what the users want to consume.”
“What we need to focus on in the coming future is ‘convergence of devices’. The volume of consumption is increasing and they need to be accessible easily across all users’ devices,” he added.

Chandrasekharan expressed his opinions on what is the need of the hour saying, “Only 1/5 of the overall smartphone using population has the data capability to use apps. We all need to cater to what users want. User problems need to be solved and there must be transparency. For example, when a user is using a music streaming app, they do not know how much data is going to be consumed. That is why we have introduced Freedom subscription in Wynk, which includes bundled data.”

The biggest challenge that the music industry faces is piracy, especially in India, where users download illegal music for convenience. Agarwal said, “The entire industry is trying very hard to curb piracy by introducing many services. Apps should introduce subscriptions which allow the users to download music when they have Wi-Fi and later listen, without data usage.”

The panellists agreed that the mid-term goal is to get at least a hundred million people to stream music, which will help reduce the piracy. With healthy smartphone consumption in the country, they believe, that hundred million is a reasonable number to expect in the next two years.

November 8, 2014
YouTube is the platform to be on, says AIB’s Tanmay Bhat

MUMBAI: The 6th edition of MixRadio Music Connects provided a pivotal platform for the discussion of Indian multi channel networks (MCNs) and how YouTube has helped artists in building a strong viewership, new content and audiences. When it comes to MCNs, India has a large digital video market and the younger audiences today are more likely to watch digital videos than television.

Moderated by Music Matters president and Branded co founder and CEO Jasper Donat, the panelists included All India Bakchod (AIB) co founder Tanmay Bhat, Qyuki Digital Media co founder and managing director Samir Bangara, Ping Network co-founder and director Rajeshree Naik, Digital Quotient (HT Media) business head entertainment Parmeet Lamba and YouTube India head of content operations Satya Raghavan. The session discussed the advent of MCNs and the rising players who are creating content online.

As the co-founder of one of India’s leading YouTube channels, Bhat spoke about how it all began for him. He said, “Well, we began as a comedy podcast and then sometime last year, we started doing sketch comedy on YouTube. Our YouTube channel became the fastest growing channels in India. We now also make content for brands”.

Raghavan expressed that he was delighted with the fresh content emerging on YouTube. He commented, “Earlier, I used to only watch YouTube for movie trailers but all of a sudden I am finding myself watching unique content on channels like AIB. It’s truly been a fascinating year for YouTube”.

Speaking of the business model of YouTube, Raghavan further elaborated, “YouTube is platform where you see online videos. Advertising is our primary source of revenue and we share more than half of that with the creators”.

Bangara added on the role of MCN in today’s market, “We are like the new-age label. We do what record labels did for musicians in the traditional market. Today, you do not have to be in a bar to discover new music talent. YouTube does that for you”.

Talking about the rise of MCNs, Donat pointed out, “This is an area where there is some serious money. Companies are being bought for hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the biggest MCN deals had Disney acquiring Maker Studios for $500 million plus $400 million earn out”.

Bangara responded, “We are in the broadcast network creation space and monetization on that is two-fold. Ad monetisation on YouTube is not sufficient. As a MCN, we bring a lot of branded content to the table. We take talent, package them and promote them to brands. Our business model is a mix of brand monetization as well as CPM ad monetisation”.

Naik agreed with Bangara and further added, “This business is eventually going to be based on relationships. The technology platform is YouTube but the MCN is purely a service business. It’s all about understanding the ecosystem and helping the artists benefit”.

Parmeet Lamba commented, “It is also important that we help individual artistes in monetizing and distributing their content. In the regional space, a lot of Punjabi music has been coming up. We build talent and they become popular. There are a lot of deals and collaborations happening in the market. A lot of brands are approaching us to feature their products for the artists’ next videos. The brands offer to sponsor these artists. And with the gained popularity, these performing artists get more live gigs”.

Elaborating on how YouTube helped him in his popularity meter, Bhat said, “When we attended the YouTube fanfest this year, it was a very overwhelming experience. People were watching us on their phones. It was a different level of engagement altogether. YouTube is the platform to be on!”

Adding on to that, Raghavan added, “There are a lot of cover singers who are becoming popular. We also get to see original content in the music space. Being on YouTube definitely gets you more gigs and it is an amazing platform for the common man to express himself. However, one needs to constantly put up content. Fans love to see the passion you have for your craft and the engagement level needs to be high. The creator needs to be disciplined and also focus on interacting with his or her fans. 2015 is going to be the year of music!”

While speaking on the potential of YouTubers breaking into the mainstream music scene, Naik opined, “If you were a musician about 20 years ago, you would have sung for about 5 years and then made a video. Today if you want to be a musician, you need to begin with the video. Today, you have that platform that can help you get noticed. That pretty much sums up why digital videos are so important for musicians”.

November 7, 2014
Music is a natural fit for brands

MUMBAI: One cannot deny the strong connection between brands and music in the ever evolving music industry. More and more labels, artists and musicians are becoming aware about brand association that could help them attain a more successful outcome. The second day of the 6th edition of MixRadio Music Connects in Mumbai had CNBC TV-18 editor storyboard Anant Rangaswami lead a panel discussion called “The brand story”. Through this panel, the audience got to learn about the importance of brands in the music ecosystem. The invited panelists included Viacom18 EVP media and business head MTV and MTV Indies Aditya Swami, Bacardi India general manager marketing Ali Imran and Vivanta by Taj GM Manojeet Bhujabal.

The panel discussed the role of brand partnerships within the music industry. The session started with Branded co founder and CEO and Music Matters president Jasper Donat and indiantelevision.com group founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari present an award to Imran, for Bacardi’s excellent brand association with music.

The key point of the discussion began with understanding how brands develop their strategies when collaborating with music.

Speaking about Taj’s music connect, Bhujabal elaborated: “Music is a primordial expression for us. Our hotels are well-known but we want to present an alternative life outside the realm of hotels. It was tough to initially develop a notion for Vivanta. We started on a basic level through house music. We went onto present Urban Tease, Barn Fest, Divas of Rock and Urban Folk. We also developed the Vivanta Sound Lab series and we look forward to discover emerging talents with fresh content.”

Imran felt there is no straight substitute for music. He commented, “Music is like oxygen for us. It reaches humans in a way that probably no other passion does. For Bacardi, music is a natural fit considering what the brand stands for, its lineage of parties and celebrating the human spirit.”

Providing his perspective as a channel head on why brands get associated with a music channel, Aditya Swami explained, “Digital has become a key part of the consumer ecosystem. It has allowed brands to talk to consumers in the language of music. We have attracted brands that want to create conversations and we have successfully done so over the years”.

Swami added that the presentation of music is of paramount importance in the industry, today. He said, “With brands supporting us, we have managed to showcase original music in the best way possible. Today, a brand like Pepsi is a partner of MTV Indies, a dedicated destination for non-film, non-mainstream music. We have given Pepsi a great platform for people to talk about what the brand is doing for the youth. Music is the voice of youth. It’s not just TV ratings that matters now. Traditional metrics are changing and there is a need to build brand love. Platforms like music are fantastic for this”.

Swami elaborated further that the music industry has an opportunity to develop within the area of music and brand partnerships. He said, “In the last 12 months, every interesting music idea that we have taken to the market has had at least a brand that is interested, as opposed to taking an idea of a reality show or TV soap where the market has become very saturated. Today, retail and lifestyle products are also part of the music ecosystem”.

At this point, Rangaswami added that brands might have a set of guidelines that would help attain a more successful outcome. He asked the panel how do the brands decide what kind of music to select when working on a campaign?

To that, Bhujabal replied: “We initially work with content partners who know the domain well. We enunciate what are the idioms and what to bring on the floor. We look at the audience and decide who we are targeting. After that, it is the job of the content creator to curate”. Bhujabal also emphasised on the importance of social media and social engagement to see how many people are engaged and liking their association with that selected genre of music.

Ending the panel discussion with some food for thought, Swami commented: “Today, I do not see enough brands or content players doing interesting cuts of our pop music industry. The content guys need to come up with interesting ideas and content relevant for brands around pop music industry. That is a huge space for us to tap into”.

November 6, 2014
Music streaming is gathering momentum in India, feel music experts

MUMBAI: At the 6th edition of MixRadio Music Connects, one of the leading panel discussions touched on the topic of streaming music in the country. The objective behind the discussion was to find out what the future of music entailed and study the growth of music streaming in India so far.

The panelists included MixRadio senior product manager Melissa Price, Believe Digital head of sales in Asia Sylvain Delange, RDIO vice president of emerging markets Snehal Shinde, Guevera founder and director of innovation Claes Loberg and was moderated by Times Music chief operating officer Mandar Thakur.

The session discussed the potential of streaming music, a way of delivering music without the need to download files of different audio formats.

Thakur introduced the session by providing a background on streaming. He said, “Often music streaming is looked upon as a tremendous blessing or a mysterious key to the great digital future. But in the last decade or so, we have been losing consumers. However, there has been the emergence of many music streaming services with many different characteristics and potential.”

Speaking about the different services, Shinde added his opinions on what makes RDIO stand out. He said, “We are a radio first service, so it’s all about giving users a laid-back experience and we achieve that by providing users with rich curated radio stations. We play songs that people like to listen to.”

Loberg shared his thoughts about the potential of Guvera, an Australian based music streaming service, which has officially launching in India today. “We have very innovative tools and we will make it easy for users to discover, share and manage the music they love,” he said.

Price talked about the evolution of Nokia Music and said, “We had a long history in the music space. We started our transformation in 2010 when we studied the music streaming space. We focused on determining the easiest way for people to listen to music. Last year, we brought to forefront a feature of Nokia music – Play Me that is the ultimate feature in providing the laid back experience. All you have to do is open the app and it’ll keep you entertained providing your own personal radio station with just one click.”

Price also added that customised meta data can help in the profiling of an artist. She said, “Good representation of the artists is important as it allows people to discover new talents and understand the existing ones. By promoting artists well, people would want to find out more about them. It increases curiosity. Things like images, biographies and Twitter handles are very important. It is important to get the meta data right in order to also know the kind of people you are connecting with to the music.”

Delange, who is heading a team of 10 music label managers in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and China, gave an overview of the role of his company in achieving a key market position in Asia. He said, “It’s really about making the product available. Our main role is to deliver the content, in order to make it available and visible on all the relevant platforms. We help the artistes and labels to understand their audiences and the marketing processes. We package the best products and ensure that everything is pitch-perfect in order to get the best results”.

The discussion then moved to the importance of social media in a world that that is increasingly being run by algorithms and lesser by humans.

Shinde opined, “Facebook likes can be quite deceiving but social media does make content accessible to a wide range of people. The artistes themselves have to be constantly in touch with their fan base. They need to engage through their social networks.”

Melissa elaborated on the importance of knowing latest trends and aliasing with bloggers to promote the content. “You need to understand the importance of a fan base. When we deliver music, we are delivering it to the fans. At MixRadio, we have a great team in India that keeps in touch with labels. It is important to know what is trending and what is popular,” she added. In her concluding remarks she said that they were working with significant bloggers who recommended the music to their fans and as a result the number of listeners had increased.

November 5, 2014
MixRadio announces next generation of music personalization

Mumbai: : MixRadio today chose the MixRadio Music Connects event in Mumbai for the global launch announcement of its new natively built recommendation engine. The new dynamic personalization engine is developed specifically to best deliver its one touch ‘Play Me’ personalized radio experience for a global audience.

Over the past 5 years, MixRadio has supplied a legitimate digital music service to over 20 million users in India. Recent research by MixRadio has revealed that mobile music streaming in India will continue grow by a massive 110% in the next four years, meaning 1 in 15 mobile music streamers globally will be in India. The research showed that personal radio will dominate this growth, and having existing data and preferences for millions of users already, MixRadio’s new personalization engine will deliver a new level of experience for Indian listeners.

The new engine curates a greater breadth of music in a more highly personalized way than ever before. It uses billions of data points from millions of consumers around the world, and uses them to deliver a completely relevant and unique listening experience. Listeners are delivered tracks from deeper into the catalogues of the artists they love, facilitating rediscovery of forgotten favourites alongside discovery of new artists. The new engine evolves the ‘Play Me’ feature of MixRadio to be an even more personal, even more effortless experience.

Jyrki Rosenberg, Head of MixRadio, comments “The challenge our development team have faced is curating overwhelming large catalogue of music, 34 million tracks, for a single listener in a way which is completely relevant and personal. Our promise to listeners is to provide their own personal radio station at the touch of a single button, and the new engine lets us truly deliver on that promise”.

The new engine has been in development and evolution since 2010, MixRadio has been moving listeners to the new recommendation engine over the past months, completing the shift today. Initial reports show the new engine is improving retention and engagement with the service.

Karan Grover, Head of Entertainment for IMEA at MixRadio, adds “This is a break though for Indian music fans in terms of how they enjoy music. The new personalization engine will allow us to build on our heritage in this market and make even better use of our huge breadth of regional music. We have been collecting data points on that music for many years, allowing us to serve up that music accurately to the people who will love it. We filter our recommendation of songs by language and our metadata takes into account not just the singer but the composers, actors and directors associated with a particular song, ultimately allowing us to deliver a richer personalization experience.

We are confident that creating the best possible personalized music streaming experience is the most effective business model we could adopt. If people are loving their listening experience, they are going to listen to more music for longer, which is good news for everyone. This combined with the knowledge we have built up around customizing our offerings to local markets in terms of delivering the right price points and billing options, means we are in a strong position to build on the head start we have in India and flourish in the coming years.”

November 5, 2014
Music piracy still continues to worry stakeholders

MUMBAI: The 6th edition of MixRadio Music Connects (MRMC) commenced on a high note today, emerging as one of the most informative and definitive annual music ecosystem gatherings. Held at the Taj Land’s End Hotel in Bandra, the proceedings of the first day were focused on the Indian music scene and its global development as an industry along with a vast understanding of new emerging platforms for aspiring entrants. The conference was attended by top executives, creative professionals, musicians, decision-makers and company heads who contributed interesting insights about the music industry.

The focus of this year’s event is to find ideas and solutions to increase monetisation and build traction for all those involved in the music business, with a special emphasis on the artiste community. Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari welcomed everyone to the conference and said, “We hope to establish new grounds in the music industry and share knowledge about the entire ecosystem.”

Branded co-founder and CEO of and Music Matters president Jasper Donat welcomed everyone to the two day conclave and said that he was very excited to be in Mumbai and participate in the event. Mobilium Global CEO Ralph Simon, popularly known as the father of the ring tone, played the perfect presenter for the whole day expressing his unique understanding of Indian music and movies. He believes that the future belongs to the screenagers of India.

The Indian Music Industry president Vijay Lazarus started off the conference by stating the two barriers that are obstructing the growth of the music industry and its investments. According to him, the first barrier is piracy, which affects everyone internationally. He further emphasised, “Due to advance technology, the consumption of music has also increased substantially. However, the monetisation of music for creators and entrepreneurs has gone down. This is frightening.”

The second barrier that stops the growth of the music industry is the inability for the creative and the entrepreneurial fraternities to come together as one. He added, “This is very relevant for India and I am happy that this particular MRMC is dedicated to the artistes as they are the heart and soul of the industry. However, there is also the entrepreneur who is also equally involved. If both the creative and entrepreneurial fraternities come together, we could be a powerhouse and we will be able to monetise our rights”. He concluded his speech by saying that if these two factors can be overcome; there will be no growth limit for the industry.

This was followed by a keynote presentation by Sony Music Entertainment India president for India and Middle East Sridhar S Subramanium. He gave an overview on the current status of our Indian music industry and he said that it is in a “healthier and profitable” position today. He spoke about the “road to a billion” phenomenon and how in a short span of five years, the industry can grow to a billion dollar industry. He said, “We just need all the right things and get all the ingredients in place and collectively figure work together”. Subramanium highlighted that one of the biggest concerns that lies in the music industry is trying to ape the west.

As part of the solutions, he suggested that the music industry should follow the TV and film industry as examples. He said, “The television industry has a huge advertising market. The music industry is effectively the same thing. People do not want to pay for music anymore. We should focus on making music free in order to curtail piracy. Just like how it happens in television, we should emphasise on getting a large addressable advertising market”.

November 4, 2014
Music adds stronger recall value to films says Imtiaz Ali

MUMBAI: “Music can make or break a movie,” said Jab We Met director Imtiaz Ali as he spoke about his love and passion for music at the MixRadio Music Connects (MRMC) today. He went on to disclose that the most fun part for him while directing a movie was when he was involved in making the music.

Speaking specifically about his love for Bollywood music and songs, Ali reckons that in an Indian movie movies were incomplete without music as was energy here. “In Highway, I started with one song in mind and ended up having nine songs in the movie.” He revealed. His latest flick Tamasha also has eight songs tracks in the movie.

He informed that in India, music recording started in 1902 and the music library today consists of around 1.2 million songs, which is more than in several countries of the world.

According to Ali, the shelf life of music is more than that of movies. Providing an example, he said “Even today we listen to songs from the 1950s and 1960s, playing on radio at times, we may not remember the movie or the actors, directors, but we always remember songs.”

He went on to speak about the phenomenon of movie directors and producers launching music titles before a movie. He felt that if the music was well received, half the battle was won as movies are remembered through their songs.

Ali, known for his special connect with young audiences, said that the connect comes when the content flows from the heart. “Anything pure and true has more chances of success and therefore Rockstar connected with the youth. They youth doesn’t want to be spoon fed or told what to do and therefore, Sadda Haq, which was a tough song to understand lyrically, but with a strong message stood out and was the most popular songs in the movie.”

Before joining movies Ali worked for two TV shows and worked on their respective music with Pritam and then ventured into producing films. His mantra for making movies was “Imagination going beyond the real vision” he said.

Starting with Socha Naa Tha, the director rose to fame with Jab We Met. His movies Love Aaj Kal and Rockstar were both critically acclaimed as well as commercial hits at the box office. He is currently working on his latest project Tamasha starring Bollywood stars Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor.

November 4, 2014
MixRadio Music Connects 2014 gets a spirited start

MUMBAI: The opening night of the 6th MixRadio Music Connects 2014 got off to a spirited start with a party hosted at the Hard Rock Café (Worli) in Mumbai on 3 November 2014.

MixRadio Music Connects 2014, to be on 4-5 November, is organised by Hong Kong based event experts Branded (Music Matters, YouTube FanFest) and Indiantelevision.com Group’s Radioandmusic.com. The conference will feature the very best of the music industry including international and independent Indian music talent, music labels, mobile operators, streaming services, live companies and social media agencies. Along with an excellent spread of food, drinks and music, the well curated evening was attended by well-known personalities from Indian and International music fraternity.

Speaking about the jam-packed line-up of this year’s conference, Branded co-founder and CEO and Music Matters president Jasper Donat said that he expects a lot of people to be there at the two day music conference. Previously having organised “All That Matters”, one of the largest musical conferences in Singapore in May 2014, Donat added that he wished to see people from the industry and attendees from India to participate in the event. He also briefly spoke about the development of Music Matters Academy that aims to prepare young talents with the business knowledge they need to sustain in a highly competitive world of music.

Present at the occasion were Donat along with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari, consultant Jay Visvadeva, Indus Music Publishing director Paul Pacifico from the UK based Specific Music, British music composer and producer Kully Bhamra, Terry Mardi of Asian music publishing and Meetal Shah from Lead India.

Originally known as Nokia Music Connects, the music conference had been renamed to ‘MixRadio Music Connects’ in order to reflect an association with Microsoft and the personalised music streaming service. The theme for this year’s music forum is “shaping the digital future” and it will feature various discussions on challenges faced in the music industry and how to empower those through different ways like monetisation etc.

The highlights for this year include keynotes by MixRadio Head, Jyrki Rosenberg, a conversation with Bollywood filmmaker Imtiaz Ali and an overview of the music industry by Sony Music president Sridhar Subramanium. All India Bakchod’s standup comic Tanmay Bhatt and YouTube sensation duo Maati Baani will also talk about their journey as artistes.

November 4, 2014