After almost a decade, Saregama explores opportunties for acquiring new film music

The company is working on monetising 1.17 lakh songs it own through digital mode

RP Sanjiv Goenka Group's Saregama India Ltd is looking at acquiring new film musics, an activity it has not been focusing on for almost a decade. The company is also looking at digital opportunities to further monetise its library of songs including by offering it to advertisers and launching applications for niche music genres, said Vikram Mehra, managing director, Saregama India Ltd.

The company is currently looking at ways to monetise its existing library of 1,17,000 songs by making it more accessible to the business and retail customers as it would bring in more margins and result in better profitability. The company has around 1,17,000 songs in eight different languages in its library.

It has digitised all the songs and made it easier for the advertisers and the retail customers to discover them as they require. On the wholesale business, the advertisers can identify suitable songs and use it in their advertisement by paying Saregama, while in retail, the customers are offered legitimate music at reasonable cost.

"As we make this better, based on the success of the verticals, we are exploring the possibilities to start acquiring new film music. Saregama has not acquired much of the new content for almost a decade. We have been acquiring very little here and there, but not in a big fashion. We had gone slow," said Mehra.

The company was a proponent of buying rights on musics based on royalty and for many of the songs it still pay royalty to the artists and the producer, a model which is not followed by many in the current industry, said Mehra. The company, in its new spell, has not decided which model it has to go for acquiring music rights, he added.

At present, T Series, Zee Music and Sony Music are some of the major players acquiring film music.

Speaking about the ongoing operations, he said, "On the wholesale business, we are realising that more and more advertisers are keen to put songs as part of their advertisements. If you have to convey something through the advertisement and we have an old song on the same, the advertiser could easily connect to the customer."

On the retail, he said that the company is offering each of its songs at Rs 9 for a compressed format and Rs 50 for a lossless format, a larger file with more quality. It has also started launching niche mobile applications, for instance an application with Carnatic music for the music lovers. The company would come up with more such niche apps where while the volume is less, the margins are higher.

Saregama, which claims to be the largest organised serial producer, has also decided to no longer make any television serial on which it does not have creative control. The TV business, which accounts to around 35 per cent of the company's total business, was incurring losses till last financial year due to the strategy where it took production of content on which it had no creative control, he said.

"Television business from this quarter will be on track and we will stop making losses out there. Thus, it will not only be a topline business for us, but also a bottomline business," he said. It produces four serials for Sun TV, two for Life OK while two serials for Doordarshan got over in the month of August.

The company has posted a turnover of Rs 182 crore during the last fiscal year.