India's First Online Music Studio BB Music Studio Launched

Bollywood film production house Bohra Brothers Production will soon launch BB Music Studio, an online brand to promote digital music sales.

Bohra Brothers Production have produced movies such as "Tanu weds Manu", "Shaitan", and "Not a Love Story". The new music studio will be launched with the music of upcoming movies including Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster this month. BB Music Studio will distribute the music across various digital platforms - mobile, online, radio as well as physical sales.

According to FE, BB Music Studio is aimed at producers of small and medium budget films and will charge an initial cost of Rs 20-30 lakh from the producers.

The key advantage of BB Music Studio will be transparency of music downloads and sales. It will also offer a revenue share of 70 per cent of the proceeds to producers.

The studio will face off with labels such as T-Series, Yash Raj Music, Venus and Saregama, who are also increasingly focussing on digital revenues and partnering with Internet players such as Yahoo! and Google-owned YouTube. Yahoo! recently launched a Bollywood movie streaming site called movieplex and YouTube has partnered with Yahoo and Sony.

Globally, digital music sales have been dropping due to rampant piracy, decline in music jobs and failure of local artists to break into the chart topping list. According to New York Times, revenues from digital music grew 25 per cent in 2008, 12 percent in 2009, and only six per cent in 2010.

But the India story seems optimistic. FE also quotes a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that states that by 2015 digital music will account for over 70 per cent of the Rs 2,140 crore music industry while the physical sales will be reduced to Rs 140 crore. In 2010, digital music accounted for Rs 440 crore outgrowing and the physical sales stood at Rs 330 crore in the Rs 950 crore music industry.