Digital music/players in India

[Szurya]

Hello....

Today, it’s the time for digital music/players everywhere in the world. Apple has sold more than 88,701,000 units  till Q1 of Jan 2007(info from Wiki). And there are other players like Sony, Samsung, Creative etc in the market. But I wonder why these are not as popular as they should be in India or any other developing country. Is it the cost price playing a villain here, or the product awareness is not up to the mark? In India, the product is not that costly.... for today’s working class, these things are becoming affordable.... and if we take the product awareness.... companies are doing their best to market the product....Every day I see ads in all media channels, employers/game shows are giving away music players instead of prize money. I see more and more people buying these, but still it’s not up to the mark....
Only reason I can get is source for the music. To download a song one needs a PC. In India the big market belongs to “middle and upper middle class” and PCs have just entered the upper middle class market. Not everybody can afford to a PC at their place. So, the digital music players are not gaining the momentum that they deserve

What do you guys think…?

Regards
Surya

[hundredstrings]

Techtree.com covers quite a bit of ground about this: techtree.com/techtree/jsp/list.jsp?list=prodcat_review_cathome&prodcat_id=432

I think PC penetration is the singlemost reason why MP3 players are not that widespread in India.  As you know, most of the country is yet to fully switch into CD players.  Definitely, cost would have played a major role while switching to CDs from the world of tapes.  Video is always a bigger attraction and hence we can see faster transition to DVD players.

Transferring songs from tapes/CDs etc., into an MP3 player is not a simple thing -- it requires quite a bit of learning and time.  Also, the earlier generations are not as eager for "mass content" as the generation X.  They are happy listening their lifetime collections, most of which are not available in digital format either!

This situation will change if digital download of music and video becomes as easy as using a cell phone...  If you look at iTunes success, it is obvious that total integration and simplification are the two key aspects of appealing to the masses.

[Szurya]

I was thinking about a workaround for this problem or if I can call it as an obstacle. Practically this may be impossible or difficult to implement.
How about a store or set of stores starting a digital music download service at their place? Something like recharging a prepaid mobile, you take a coupon and enter it into a PC provided in the store and download the music. This coupon can be of two types. First one, a customer pays for the song/s he need and gets a code from the store. Second one, company can provide standard codes for most wanted numbers.

HPR, what do you say on this? Is any retailer in US, providing this kind of service?

Cheers
Surya....

[hundredstrings]

Managing the music library ges way too complicated if you use your MP3 player as the primary storage of your music files -- that's why iPod + iTunes uses a computer-centric approach: all your media files live centrally on your computer and you can sync them to any number of iPods.  So, if we were to download music from various kiosks into our MP3 player, you need to make sure that the software used by the kiosks and the software you use on your computer to manage your MP3 player are compatible in some way...  Simplest way is to make the MP3 player work with just one software!  One reason why iTunes + iPod has become such a great success is the beauty of integration -- the combination is so simple to use and it JUST WORKS!