Radio City, Radio Mirchi woo listeners with audio books

Radio companies like Radio City and Radio Mirchi, which have been using audio books to entertain children with disabilities, are tying up with schools and publishers to get more bang for the buck.

For Radio City, the initiative is a source of additional revenue from content retailing. On the other hand, Radio Mirchi’s audio books are an extension of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR), introduced nearly two years ago, through which it aimed at touching the lives of blind children. This effort has since extended its base and reached out to audiences and children at large.

Audio books have been around since the 1980s. They are often based on a recording of commercial printed material and not necessarily an exact audio version of a book. The non-education publishing market is pegged at Rs 2,000 crore, of which audio books comprise 5-10 per cent. The biggest market for audio books is the US where the market size is in excess of $2 billion.

Radio Mirchi is now planning to tie up with publishers for their database which could be translated into audio books. Says Riya Mukherjee, senior vice-president, CSR and creative services, Radio Mirchi: “The idea behind audio books was to provide blind students the ability to access books with the same ease that people without disabilities enjoy. So far, we have made close to 350 audio books.”

Radio Mirchi’s audio books also come with digital accessible information system (Daisy), which is a means for creating digital talking books for people who wish to hear and navigate written material. Many of the users of Daisy have “print disabilities”, including blindness, impaired vision and dyslexia.

To take the initiative forward, Radio Mirchi has tied up with Bookshare.org, which has a collection of over 50,000 digital books and textbooks, as well as over 150 newspapers and periodicals. Radio Mirchi has also tied up with Navneet Publications in Ahmedabad for 52 children’s books that would be translated by Radio Mirchi into audio CDs in English, Hindi and Gujarati languages, informed Mukherjee. The company has also tied up with Eureka Book Stores for its Ek Kahani series. Radio Mirchi had sold audio books of Ek Kahani in Delhi, and is now looking at making the CDs available across India.

Radio City, on the other hand, is introducing City of Tales to mark its foray into the audio book segment in association with the leading publisher of children’s books, BPI India. The first two releases of City of Tales would be folktales and Animal Wisdom. Each title comprises five stories, each of about 8-10 minutes. The titles are available in Hindi and English and will also have activity books.

Apurva Purohit, chief executive officer, Radio City, says: “Radio City’s extension to this segment seemed logical as our association with the art of entertainment through audio is over a decade old. We decided on BPI India since they specialise in publishing children’s books.”

Radio City’s audio books comprise CDs with stories, activity books like puzzles, mazes, sketching and colouring activities based on the stories. The stories chosen have a relevance to India. “We are planning to tie up with schools and kindergarten for additional revenues from the audio books segment,” says Purohit.

Radio City is introducing two titles to begin with and 5,000 copies of each title. In one year, Radio City has plans to introduce eight titles.

The biggest audio books company in India is “Karadi Tales”. Since 1996, it has been producing original Indian multimedia content with focus on audio and video CDs, VCDs and DVDs in retail, internet and broadcast markets. Karadi Tales has brought together some of India’s finest artistes including Naseeruddin Shah, Gulzar, Girish Karnad, Usha Uthup and Nandita Das. Despite the television and internet boom each title of “Karadi Tales” has gone into reprint in less than 12 months of its release.

Analysts, however, believe that audio books will remain a niche market in India. Jehil Thakkar, head of media and entertainment, KPMG, said, “Auido books will remain a marginal revenue line. As of now, audio books are essentially narration, but perhaps companies could introduce more variety like short plays which would also help the market mature.”