iTunes Music Store in India?

[milganz]

Do you think Apple should open its iTunes Music Store in India? Will there be enough market for it? And what do you think the prices should be?

[Nemesis]

I don't think Apple will open the store for Indian users. There are a number of hurdles. For one, broadband penetration is low. Then, not a lot of people own credit cards which means they will have to come up with an alternative payment system also. Furthermore, not a lot of people will be willing to pay Rs. 40 and above for a single song. They would have to drop prices really low just to sell some songs

[vignesh]

ya the cost is something people here will not pay for a single song when you get an mp3 cd for 25 bucks with 10 films songs in that.

[mail2and]

FYI nemi... there are 4-5 crore credit card holders in India...

the main problem is piracy... we are used to buy song cds for Rs. 20.. no one will spend that much for a song.

then comes apple's policies. They have their music stores in only 2-3 countries. I don't think India will be on their radar for atleast 5 years.

no use

[Nemesis]

Andy, 4-5 crores is a measly 4-5% of the population. It's low in terms of percentages. But yeah, the piracy issue is paramount. People now are just not willing to pay for music. They won't even buy say 1 album to support their favorite artists. Not even at reduced prices.

[milganz]

Most people in India, if they want a few songs of an artist only, download songs off P2P. If they are caught doing this, the excuse most of them will have is that there aren't any sources from where to get song downloads. Indiatimes gives them, but again, they sell songs for around 40 bucks. The alternative we have are CDs, but most people would rather not buy a whole legal CD for a couple of songs.

Thus music companies and record labels need to ease their prices in India if they want piracy to be reduced. And this does not mean giving substandard quality stuff like Microsoft did with Windows XP Starter Edition. Apple is definitely not taking initiative in this case.

The other reason why I think Apple isn't planning to open a store in India is the iPod factor. The songs are in MPEG-4 format, so they can't be transferred to any music player other then the iPod. But the iPod is still considered an object of desire by many in the market. People would rather have WMA files, if copyrighted at all, so that they can get them onto common music players.

[Sreekanth V]

I think they will start it in India exactly after 12 years 3 months and 18 days.
I also didn't think there are many people capable of paying a big fee for a single track, while at the same price a CD full of MP3s are available here.
Even if a small amount of people are able to pay the premium, they need not know what even iTunes is.

Those who know what it is, may not be able to pay this much.

Only if Apple give 18 high quality tracks for 50Rs I will go for it.

[drvarunmehta]

Originally Posted by milganz

If they are caught doing this, the excuse most of them will have is that there aren't any sources from where to get song downloads.

Who in India has ever been 'caught' using P2P?

[Sreekanth V]

How can they be 'caught'?

[milganz]

See this: 12-Year-Old Sued for Music Downloading

It's very easy to catch a person using P2P, by tracking their IP. Obviously, in India (a) the law doesn't care (b) most people have dial-up i.e. a dynamic IP. I was just saying that if they are caught, they will still have an excuse.