Whither goest thou?

MUSIC: Is the CD-first release of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna a sign of a format shift in the Indian music market?

While Karan Johar's film Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (KANK) awaits its release next month, the soundtrack composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and released by Sony BMG is already shaking up the charts.

But instead of storming shopshelves with cassettes, as is the norm, Sony BMG has opted to launch CDs as a solo format first. At Rs 99 per CD, by the company's calculations, the price is attractive enough to sell in large numbers. A batch of six lakh CDs, accordingly, was distributed last month "" India's biggest CD launch in Hindi.

"We had been witnessing a change in the consumers," says Shridhar Subramaniam, managing director, Sony BMG Entertainment, "and knew that a huge chunk of the audio market in India was turning towards CDs.We just wanted to identify the right project, and when KANK came along, we knew we were ready for a test launch."

But why leave out the cassette consumer? It's not that no cassettes are available at all. It's just that they hit shelves a fortnight, like a paperback book edition following the hardback after it has skimmed the market's cream. Normally, Sony BMG would have released 4 lakh cassettes and 2 lakh CDs. With KANK, the ratio stands reversed.

The upmarket trappings of the film has something to do with this. As Ehsaan says, the KANK listener is likely to be relatively well-off.

"I think this film was a perfect testing vehicle. The consumer for the music of KANK is in the bigger cities and not in the smaller towns and villages," he says, adding, "Listeners of our music, I presume, buy CDs most of the time."

According to Vishal Patel of Dharma Productions, the banner behind the film, "It's clear that cassette consumption is reducing day by day, and maybe in the near future it will be negligible."

Negligible? That sounds like overkill: affordable car stereos (and portable devices) are still mostly cassette players, for example, since mobile CD players need special digital chips for uninterrupted music through bumps and jerks along the road.

"We took a huge risk," admits Subaramaniam, "but managed to introduce a trend in the market for others to follow." What's more, it was a worthwhile risk, he adds. Some 2.5 lakh CDs have already sold.

This has given Sony BMG confidence in taking the market up the value curve "" encouraging upgradations to CDs, the standard format globally (challenged, though, by MP3 internet downloads now).

"A majority of our international releases are only available on CDs," says Subramaniam, "and we plan to extend this to some of our forthcoming Indian film album releases as well."

Are CDs, henceforth, the way to go in this market? Well, Yash Raj Music's forthcoming film Dhoom II might also opt for a CD-only release, say sources.

But will this scale the entire market up "" or just harden the price segmentation?