 "Blame piracy, streaming: It's the end of your favourite Music World store")
Kolkata’s landmark music store on Park Street is shutting down next month as the onslaught of digital downloads and streaming has made India’s number one music and video retail chain Music World unviable for the Sanjiv Goenka group.
The move is part of a larger exit strategy as all Music World stores across India will face closure soon.
“In the last few years, the onset of digitisation of music and shift in consumer preferences towards music and video downloads has rendered the business model (of Music World) unviable. We are therefore exiting this business,” Sanjay Gupta, Corporate Head Marketing, RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, said in an official statement.
[caption id=“attachment_868845” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  The move is part of a larger exit strategy as all Music World stores across India will face closure soon.[/caption]
The restructuring started in 2012 when 100 Music World stores spread across India were reduced to just seven in West Bengal. Park Street’s store is the last one on the listed and will close its shutters on 1 July, 2013.
Last year, Music World Retail was merged with Spencer’s Retail as it posted a loss of over Rs 25 crore in 2011-2.
The music industry has seen a major fall in physical sales of CDs and DVDs since popular websites like saavn.com, gaana.com and dhingana.com release latest Hindi film song officially before anywhere else.
“The trend of listening to music online has taken over and digital options such as streaming websites are a good way to reach out to listeners,” Adarsh Gupta, Senior Vice President, Sa Re Ga Ma was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsAccording to the report, online streaming works despite music piracy due to instant access to high-speed internet and the integrated social media options of sharing songs on Facebook and Twitter.
But music piracy, unfortunately, has not only eaten into the profits of retail chains but also online music download services. A little over a week ago, Flipkart shut its nascent music download service Flyte, claiming there is insufficient demand for paid downloads in the country.
The digital music store would allow users to download music as individual songs or entire albums from collections from Indian and international music companies at reasonable prices to address the problem of piracy.
However, “revenues from song downloads were fairly low - not even 50% of the minimum guarantee amount (only around Rs 2-3 crore is what we heard), and the ARPU was around Rs 9-12 per user, which made it difficult to justify the minimum guarantee, and any significant customer acquisition costs,” a Media Nama report pointed out.
“We have realised that the music downloads business in India will not reach scale unless several problem areas such as music piracy and easy micro-payments are solved in great depth. Which is why, we feel that at present, it makes sense to take a step back from Flyte MP3s and revisit the digital music market opportunity at a later stage,Flipkart Head (Digital Media and Payments) Mekin Maheshwari said in a statement.
With easy access to illegal songs in India thanks to BitTorrent and Songs.pk, the model proved a challenge for Flipkart.
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
