The panel discussion on mobile music featured Sudhanshu Sarronwala, CEO of Soundbuzz and Shridhar Subramaniam, MD of Sony BMG. Subramaniam started off saying that the key thing for them is to be able to monetize content – all content that they create is for monetization, not for promotion. Telco’s still lack the knowledge of packaging and presenting content, which retailers know how to do. Sarronwala reiterated Soundbuzz’ estimates that mobile music sales in India will surpass physical music sales between 2007 and 2008. 
He does feel that the search function on the mobile needs to be explored, as do opportunities in music referrals. Responding to a question, Subramaniam said that the music being tailored by some studios to be CRBT friendly. Asked about partnerships and collaborations, he said that Sony BMG’s role is to nurture and exploit talent, and take a call on content. The growth of broadcast and radio has helped things, and they will look at creating new talent, and then monetize the opportunity using multiple media. Sarronwala spoke about Soundbuzz’ dual delivery project, where, in Singapore they allow music to be downloaded to the phone, and then email a backup to those who have downloaded it. He said that on the mobile, 80 percent 50 to 60 percent of the music downloaded is hit driven sales are derived from purchase of hits. People are looking online for music catalogues, and online, the market is mainly about catering to the long tail.
Sarronwala told me later that they might be experimenting with the same in India later this year, as well as other models like offering discounts to drive music downloads.
Ruben van den Heubel, VP Business Development Asia for Sony BMG, in his presentation, spoke about how ringback tones provide security of content, though they have seen CRBTs being pirated in China. They see opportunity in the immediacy of purchase of music on the mobile, because the time it takes to select and purchase a song on the mobile means that they lose out on impulse purchases. Mobile music videos need to have aspect ratio. The big drivers of growth for digital music – bandwidth, memory and battery life. Low pricing can help increase subscriptions to music content.