Helping African Music Grow

Fri, May 3, 2013

By publisher

3 MIN READ

Mahindra Comviva, a global leader in mobile solution services, expands its mobile music offerings in Africa

MAHINDRA Comviva, the global leader in providing mobile solutions beyond VAS, is rapidly expanding its mobile music offerings in Africa. Over the last 12 months, the company has become one of the largest music aggregators in the African continent, having collaborated with more than 70 partners including local and international content providers/copyright bodies/local artists and production houses in the region.

Currently Mahindra Comviva owns music rights for 35,000 music assets spanning multiple popular genres including Hip Hop, Pop, Inspirational, Rumba, Hip Life, Football Chants, Gospel, Jazz, Rock, Reggae and Retro in more than 30  languages. Operators in Africa have seen more than fourfold increase in their music services penetration and subscriber base, multifold increase in their music revenues, using Mahindra Comviva’s digital services.

Mahindra Comviva manages an operator’s complete music and infotainment services portfolio bringing together content technology platform, discovery, analytics and recommendation tools, storefront management and business and marketing expertise to drive growth and usage. Recently the company launched its music and content recommendation engine, which enables operators to maximize VAS sales by matching music and content to customers’ preferences in real-time. The ability to cater to an audience has helped operators to record a 50 percent growth in sales.

Commenting on its managed music services success in the continent, Atul Madan, head of Digital Services, Mahindra Comviva, said: “We are committed to bringing world class digital services that enrich the lives of people across markets. We have focused on expanding the operator’s digital music and infotainment ecosystem by bringing local content application and partners in addition to recognized international labels. With our proven expertise in deploying and managing music services for operators, Mahindra Comviva is committed towards operator’s revenue growth.”

To help operators retain a dominant position in the marketplace and counter the threat from over the top players, Mahindra Comviva has also added innovative offerings to its popular infotainment suite “Hi Life” and “MyTV”, adding a wide range of digital applications – TV channels, news, health, recipes, astrology, delivered over multiple channels – video, voice and text, to subscribers over multiple channels including OBD, IVR, USSD, SMS, Star to Copy, Facebook, Customer Care and Web. Customers, for instance, can download the transcript whilst viewing a video of their favorite recipe. Likewise, customers can buy their favorite music as a downloadable video or a ring back tone from the same storefront.

Leading operator groups in Africa have outsourced management of their music services portfolio to Mahindra Comviva. On an average, music services in Africa contribute 40 percent to operators’ downloadable content revenues. To cater to fast evolving trends and sustain consumer engagement, the company is constantly introducing service features like Karaoke, user generated music content and social RBT.

According to a recent report, demand for content based services grew by 18 percent in 2012 and the global mobile entertainment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.61 percent between 2013-2015.