As reported by us a few days ago, Flipkart has launched their “Flyte” Digital Store today in India. The store currently offers legal MP3 downloads at extremely reasonable prices. This move is a potential game changer in the way Indians buy music. Indian consumers have been waiting for such a service since quite some time. Since the popularity of MP3s and MP3 players, going to a store and buying a music CD sounds extremely lame. Success of the iTunes Music store has already proven that legal MP3 downloads is a great model provided the prices are reasonable. And Flipkart seems to be doing exactly that.
Users can buy MP3s encoded at high quality 320kbps bitrate and are DRM free and can be played on any device. Furthermore, flipkart lets you re-download a purchased song upto 4 more times (in case you accidentally loose your backup).
Songs are priced between INR 6 and INR 15. This is a sweet spot for most Indian consumers. iTunes sells songs for 0.99$ which is well over INR 45 per song. A whole Bollywood album on iTunes usually costs more than the price of its CD in India. Moreover, to buy songs from iTunes, you need to have a US iTunes account and a US based credit/debit card to make the purchases. Flipkart is going to rope in a lot of people who have been buying songs from iTunes.
The next step for Flipkart is to build mobile apps for leading mobile platforms. A major advantage with iTunes is the ability to be able to enjoy all your purchased music on any iDevice. If Flipkart is able to provide apps that support these features, it will surely become a big barrier to entry to iTunes or anyone else who wants to join the digital music reseller bandwagon in India.
Flipkart also plans to foray into movie rental and ebook sales arena which should follow later this year.
