TALKING POINT: INDUSTRY TRACKER

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SONGDEW TV HAS MULTIPLE REVENUE MODELS AND WE AIM TO TOUCH RS 10 CRORE REVENUE ACROSS PLATFORMS: SANDIP TARKAS

Songdew.com, a leading online music publishing platform, has partnered with DTH player Videocon d2h exclusively to launch a 24-hour active service providing a TV platform for Indie music to over 19 million households across India. The channel will show the best of independent music and live acts from across the country. Songdew TV allows artistes to collaborate, create, publish, promote and distribute their music. Here are excerpts from a conversation with Sandip Tarkas, Director, Songdew:

ON OBJECTIVE BEHIND LAUNCHING SONGDEW TV: Videocon is one of the leading providers of high tech DTH services and we also found a synergy in our thinking about content and the vision of what a channel focused on independent music can achieve.
 

ON MARKETING INITIATIVES FOR SONGDEW.COM AND SONGDEW TV: Songdew is the largest community of independent musicians with over 28,000 registered artistes and a massive bank of independent music that is quite spectacular. The best form of promotion that we will have is leveraging some amazing cross-media promotional opportunities from the web to the app to the TV channel. We also have a bank of some amazing musicians doing unplugged acts for the channel and many more activities.
 

ON THE REVENUE MODEL FOR SONGDEW AND SONGDEW TV: There are multiple revenue models and that is another advantage that we will have over anybody else. So, apart from advertising across all the platforms, original music production and music licensing and live events are some of the major revenue streams that we have and we plan to touch Rs 10 crore in revenue across platforms.
 

ON CHALLENGES FACED SO FAR: Apart from the usual start-up challenges, the platform is quite unique and the musician community bought into it pretty quickly. Listener acceptance took a little longer but has been growing spectacularly, especially in the past 8-9 months. The revenues too have doubled in the last one year. With the launch of TV, we expect an even more spectacular growth this year.
 

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE WEBSITE AND TV CHANNEL: We plan to grow aggressively across both the platforms feeding on each other with the right kind of marketing push.

ZOOM WILL GROW BY 40% THIS YEAR: NIKHIL GANDHI

Zoom, part of the Times Network, announced a brand partnership with leading online fashion e-tailer, Myntra. In its new avatar, ‘Zoom styled by Myntra’, the channel will launch new shows, web-series, short formats and create exclusive experiences. Nikhil Gandhi, President & Chief Business Officer, Times Network tells us more…
 

WHAT’S NEW ON ZOOM: All news on our channel will now have the element of story-telling to it. Zoom will see an infusion of new shows and a lot of original fictional content. Our first web-series The Reunion...Jab They Met Again launches on April 28, and we will launch six web-series this year.
 

THE PARTNERSHIP WITH MYNTRA: We loved the vision and the imagination that Myntra brought to the table. Myntra adds value in terms of styling and fashion to everything on Zoom. There will also be a few separate segments, exclusively for fashion, which will be handled by Myntra.
 

ON POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST WITH OTHER FASHION BRANDS: All fashion brands are available on Myntra. Thus, there is no conflict of interest. The e-commerce category is blocked for sponsorship or promotion on Zoom but the FPC and spot buys will still be open for the category.
 

ON BUILDING IPs AND EXPERIENCES: Next year, our Zoom Holi Party will be a ticketed event. We are working with a lot of partners for events and experiences which will be built on music and entertainment, fashion, concerts and lifestyle. Eventually at the strategic business level, Zoom Entertainment will be one element with all its assets and IPs. We want to build 30% of our revenues from branded content and on-ground is yet another element of business. We are looking at brand diversification by way of merchandise and monetization, in the form of experiences. The objective is to create a separate unit eventually, and call it the experience business.
 

INCREASING THE YIELD: We will grow our topline revenues by 40% this year. If you look at the FCT business, it’s plateauing at a certain level as we have reached saturation point, in terms of inventory. Our endeavour is to increase our yield by 25%, which is only possible if you infuse energy, style and new content in to your brand, and we plan to do just that.

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