Fighting mobile piracy

How Airtel is putting up a fight.

The Indian Music Industry (IMI), which loses an estimated Rs 500 crore every year to music piracy, has another menace to worry about in the unauthorised music downloads that have been spreading around cellular phone networks, "peer to peer" (or P2P in net parlance).

But Bharati Tele-Ventures, owner of Airtel, believes an effective way to stop piracy is to provide easy and cheap access to legal alternatives, and publicise them. Hence its latest scheme: music@ease. Aimed at the Airtel broadband subscriber, it offers legal downloads of the latest Hindi and international chartbusters at airtel-broadband.com.

To ensure it has a comprehensive offer list, it has tied up with online music distribution company Soundbuzz that has already figured its way around the spaghetti bowl of alliances and legalese that constitutes the music property world today.

Soundbuzz boasts of license agreements with such music labels as Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, Saregama, Venus and Tips, among others.

"Besides the fact that this facility provides high quality music downloads which are legal," says Rajeev Sharma, CEO, Airtel, broadband and telephones, Delhi and NCR, "it also protects the system from viruses".

The deal plays to Bharati's strengths. The company claims to have about 2.5 lakh of India's total of 8 lakh broadband The offer is tempting: Rs 10 for an Indian track and Rs 19.99 for an international number. Airtel subscribers get a 30-per cent discount on every song download.

The Singapore-based Soundbuzz, on the other hand, gets access to a big market of mobile phone users. Says Mandar Thakur, general manager, Soundbuzz, "It's a critical tie-up as it brings together our compelling content in Hindi and English music with Airtel's high broadband speed and ease of billing."