India-focused streaming music services like Dhingana, Saavn and Gaana may be growing rapidly, but DRM-free downloads store Flyte is shutting down. Run by e-commerce company Flipkart, it only launched in February 2012 (Bulletin, 24-Feb-12) and was tipped to make a big impact at the time. “In a short span of time we built a massive digital music catalogue at very affordable prices along with a loyal base of nearly 100,000 customers,” says Flipkart’s Mekin Maheshwari. “However, we have realized that the music downloads business in India will not reach scale unless several problem areas such as music piracy and easy micro-payments etc. 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.” It seems that for this particular service, trying to fight free piracy with paid downloads didn’t come off. Cue more attention on how the ad-supported streaming services – some with premium subscription tiers – fare in India.
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