Sony music eyes 25 % market share by next year

Company's Kolaveri Di song to reach 100 million mark soon

Eyeing a 25 per cent market share in the country’s music industry, Sony Music Entertainment (SME) is planning to enter the pop business and child-related content in a big way.

The company has already joined hands, for syndication, with Sun TV to air child-related content. It has said it would invest Rs 100-150 crore in the coming years to generate more content.

Sony’s ‘Kolaveri Di’, the song by Tamil actor Dhanush and music composer Anirudh, which went viral across the country some years earlier, will soon be the first Indian video to reach 100 million hits on YouTube, claims the company. Shridhar Subramaniam, the president for India and the Middle East at SME, said many people have made versions of it and if one took user-generated content, the number had crossed 500 mn.

The factors behind its success include nature of the song, considered playful, freshness, sound, and funny lyrics. Sony’s marketing efforts in the past four years helped. “We were not protective about the content; we let everybody use the song,” said Subramaniam, adding it was a good marketing lesson for the company and would help it on techniques to target social media.

On Sony’s operations in India, he said of the Rs 1,000-crore industry, it had 22 per cent market share, from 19 per cent a year earlier, the number two player. A deal with Warner Music, and making strong inroads in Tamil, Punjab and other regional languages, have helped. The target is a market share of 25 per cent by next year. He noted the industry was expected to touch about Rs 2,000 crore by 2018-19.

Beside strengthening its business, Sony is betting highly on the children's music division and the pop market. For kids, the company has entered into a syndication with Sun Group, which has 33 channels and is one of the largest media houses in the south. It is looking for more such tie-ups. The company would create and develop content for the broadcasters.

Subramaniam said the children’s segment is hugely underserved, with not many companies focusing, apart from animation, in this segment, whereas advertisers' interest is growing rapidly. Sony has created a team to develop content here -- video, apps, education, kids' bands, live action bands, magic shows, brain development shows, etc.

“Content is not cheap, so we need good economies of scale,” said Subramaniam, adding they'd invest Rs 100-150 crore across the business.

On challenges, he said, a major one was piracy. A second issue for the industry was streaming, since mobile and internet penetration is increasing. He said people spend 100-120 minutes in a month to hear music through phones or internet. The way forward is on how to increase it to 300 minutes, the target Sony is working towards.