Turn on, tune in

When MSN announced last fortnight that it would provide a radio service on its India portal, courtesy a tie-up with the satellite-based digital radio service provider WorldSpace, it marked an arrangement that suits both players.

For MSN, which is in online music globally but not in India, the tie-up with WorldSpace is the first step towards offering online music in India.

For the subscription-based radio service provider, finding space on the MSN India portal gives it an opportunity to target a wider user base.

Globally even as recorded music sales continue to fall, sales of digital music have been growing smartly, by 85 per cent to $2.1 billion, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. MSN, for its part, has a multi-year, global content distribution agreement with Control Room, the numero uno provider of live digital entertainment and the producers of Live 8.

The partnership has led MSN to be the exclusive online worldwide destination for Control Room’s live music programming, via live and on-demand streaming. In India, however, as Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager-India, Online Service Group, Microsoft, points out, online music —via audio and video streaming— can only take off once broadband arrives in a big way. Till then, there’s the experiment with WorldSpace. “The association is part of our commitment to our users in bringing the best entertainment online,” offers Bindra.

WorldSpace, meantime, hasn’t been doing too badly for itself, growing from 74,000 subscribers in 2005 to 1.7 lakh till date. Regulatory issues are not letting the radio service, which boasts over 40 stations across musical genres, to cash in on in-car listeners. This prevents it from cashing in on the huge in-car listening base, which accounts for a fifth of all radio listening hours in India.

What also prevents rapid growth is the subscription-based model of the service at a time when FM radio channels are proliferating and are free. A presence on the MSN India portal may just help in turning things around. Says Adam Barker, Senior Vice President, WorldSpace India: “It is important for us to create consumer awareness about our services. We have garnered a good number of subscribers in a relatively short time, and we hope to do even better now (after the tie-up with MSN)”.

Subscribers to the MSNWorldSpace service will get 24x7 access to five WorldSpace stations for a monthly fee of roughly Rs 400 or $9.95 for NRIs in US, UK and Middle East. That’s arguably a small price for being able to tune into the only ‘legal’ online radio service around.