Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company, is closing down its MP3 store,
Flyte. The store had licensed domestic and international music content, enabling users to download individual numbers for a nominal price. It will no longer be operational after June 17 this year, the company said in a communication to customers.
"We request you to use your Flyte Wallet balance by that date. But if for some reason you are unable to do this we will refund the unused Flyte wallet balance to you," the communication said.
The company said there were problems with micro-payments and piracy and that the market was not ready yet for the service. Flipkart would re-enter at a later stage, it added.
Mekin Maheshwari, Head of Digital Media and Payments at the company, said in a statement, "We set up Flyte MP3s a year back in what was an extremely nascent industry. The aim was to bring legal
digital content to consumers in India. In a short span of time we built a massive digital music catalog at very affordable prices along with a loyal base of nearly 100,000 customers. However, we have realized that the music downloads business in India will not reach scale unless several problem areas such as
music piracy and easy micro-payments etc. are solved in great depth. Which is why, we feel that at present, it makes sense to take a step back from Flyte MP3s and revisit the digital music market opportunity at a later stage."
In fact, the closure is admission that the company's sales from its music store was average and did not keep pace with its expectations. Flipkart was probably losing too much money in the process - selling music online means making huge upfront payments to
labels to license their content. Stores like Flyte depend on huge volumes of customers downloading songs priced as low as Rs 5 to recover upfront payments made.
A snapshot of Flyte website 
Special 
