The Music industry country report for India (February 2012) paints the picture of a country with a rapidly growing population who love downloading music. However the rise of mobile penetration and broadband access coupled with high poverty levels and copyright legislation issues have led to a big problem with illegal downloading. Unfortunately low levels of personal income make cheap pirate content an attractive proposition at the moment.
Digital trade revenues have increased from 28.5% in 2010, to US$54.1 million. The high increase of mobile phone acquisition and broadband means that almost all trade revenues from digital sales come from mobile formats. This is due to increase further given that India’s high-speed mobile networks have only recently started rolling out 3G services.
The current level of 3G penetration has limited sales of full-track downloads, but future growth will boost sales. Moreover, even a 2.3% share of the mobile subscription base means that more than 20 million people have high-speed mobile access, a figure equal to many countries in Europe.
Plenty of interest in ring tones and ring-back tones are leading India toward digital dominance. But high piracy levels persist and copyright reform has ground to halt, with little action expected any time soon from a government embroiled in one corruption scandal after another.
Piracy does not only effect the music business, movie producers have also protested that the lenient laws around movie piracy which includes the sale of pirate DVD’s and even the broadcast of unlicensed movies by local cable operators, is incurring huge losses.
It seems India’s piracy issues are urgently in need of addressing, the country shows a promising economy and is one of the only countries not to slip into recession in recent years. It’s digital revolution has proven one of the most profitable areas of the economy and in order to avoid destruction, the problems surrounding copyright legislation need to be given serious attention. However with a government under fire from every angle this doesn’t seem to be a priority at the moment.
