MUMBAI: The revamped website of music major Saregama is likely to be up again by October or November this year.
The site, that was launched in a refurbished avatar last year, has been closed for revamp for a few months now.
According to Saregama CEO Apurv Nagpal, who took charge of the company three months ago, the website could be one of the critical ways the company takes its distribution ahead in innovative ways.
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“The focus has to shift from creating CDs to creating content and then finding a way to distribute it, either digitally or the mobile phone…it doesn’t matter. Right now, what we have is Hamaracd.com and we have just started something on the WAP front,” he says.
Nagpal is upbeat on the music front, saying that it’s heartening that more and more music is being consumed today, particularly by youngsters, in a multitude of ways, including the mobile , an SD card, a memory stick, an MP3 player, or even the radio in the car.
A service like HamaraCD.com, that the company launched a few years ago, to enable listeners to order customised CDs with content assembled from the vast Saregama library, still has its loyal set of consumers, says Nagpal.
Stressing that the year ahead will be one of experimentation when the company toys with different ideas, and strengthens its digital and marketing teams, Nagpal says it is crucial the company capitalise on the huge music bank it boasts. Saregama has already 90,000 songs digitised and ready, and another 30,000 will be added to this soon.
Telecom providers though have access to only about 25000 songs of these. The stress will be on making more available, he says, as non physical formats of music are now contributing almost 50 per cent of the total music revenues to the company.
“All we need now is a great marketing strategy, a great commercial strategy, we need to rethink the business model and experiment,” he avers.
On the film front, Saregama has signed three big budget films with an investment of Rs one billion. One is Abbas Tyrewala’s film 1 800 Love , then there’s Chenab Gandhi with Sanjay Leela Bhansali and the third is Apoorva Lakhia’s untitled project. Again on the film side, Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife should also release some time this year.
