We had an opportunity to attend Nokia Music Connects 2010 on September 2, 2010 and to discuss Nokia OVI Music Services in India with Adam Mirabella (Global Director of OVI Music Services, Nokia). Its his 4th visit to India in a year, Adam Mirabella was pretty excited about the opportunities in Indian Market. It was not just related to Nokia Ovi Music Services but also bringing together all the Music industry giants which includes Sony Music India, EMI, BMG, RPG SAREGAMA and many others at Nokia Music Connects 2010. The opening of the ceremony was done with a beautiful song named ‘Shanti Aye’ performed by Australian Band ‘Old Man River‘ with Hamsika Iyer.
Nokia has transformed itself from a Mobile handset company to now provide a much more wider range of services which are bundled to Nokia Mobile Phones & provided to the consumer. There are various services which includes Maps, Email, Contacts, Applications and also Music and all these are branded as ‘OVI’.
India is a country with various languages & with different religions. To tap such diverse economy & various challenges Nokia India has dedicated editorial team who can bring up the regional expertise & provide quality content to its diverse audience. We also got to know that Nokia has significantly invested in this editorial team so that content they offer in Nokia Ovi Music will be unique & special.
One of biggest challenges in India are piracy which hampers the paid digital music significantly. Nokia has provided the very unique solution to this problem as well. Adam has conveyed us that their solution works for the entire Music Ecosystem, not only the artist / labels but also to the operators (carriers). The solution is Nokia Ovi Music Unlimited Service. During his talk at Nokia Music Connects, Adam also revealed “that given the unlimited model, users have taken the liberty to try out more than twice as many different genres of music.”
If we check their all services which comes under OVI Brand, we will know that OVI Music is the only paid service. All other services which includes Nokia OVI Maps, Nokia OVI Email, Nokia OVI Contacts, Nokia OVI Calendar are free, only exception is the Nokia OVI Store where some content is free & some content is paid. During his keynote to Nokia Music Connects, he mentioned that Nokia OVI Music is going to be no. 1 revenue driver for digital music content. That shows how much Nokia is concerned & interested about its OVI Music services in India.
During the interview with Adam Mirabella we asked no of questions; you can listen the interview in audio format below
Audio Interview Part 1/2
Audio Interview Part 2/2
Some of the questions did not get recorded due to technical glitch. These are as follows with its replies provided by Adam Mirabella & Gitanjali Sharma (Nokia India).
1. Will Nokia launch DRM free services in India?
Adam: No plans on the cards at this moments but we have launch such services in China.
2. What’s the definition of a Song or a Track in Ovi Music? For example, if a classical track is for 45 minutes, then will it be considered as single track or it will be break up in multiple parts?
Adam: Its all Label dependent but In India we have no such issues as these definitions are as per the various markets. In India we don’t have such breakup of songs.
3. Why preview of a song in Ovi Music India is just for 30 sec? How will I get the idea of a song in just 30 sec? Don’t you think so that the preview of song should be more than 30 sec? Like 1 minute or 1.5 minutes?
Adam: Yes its a good feedback. I will check into this.
Gitanjali: Yes, we can increase the preview for more than 30 sec.
You can check no of pictures which are captured during Nokia Music Connects 2010. Overall we had wonderful evening with Nokia Music Connects 2010 in Taj Lands End, Mumbai, India.
Gaurav Hasabnis contributed this report