You all heard this by now. Smule Timesmusic and Mx Player. Very Confusing, OMG! what the heck is this?
Times Internet is an India company which owns, operates and invests in various Internet-led products, services and technology and is a part of the original Times media group owned by Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited. One of the most prestigious business they own in India is the Times of India, the major news paper published in English. Times of India become the common thread of communication in a country that speak about twenty two different languages. The role of this news paper in reporting and journalism of international standards is a proud privately held business from India. The brief take over by foreigners made the name of the compnay look like it has something to do with foreign investment. The company have its main stake hoding by a single family called Sahu Jain family. Times Internet division, make business by buying internet gadgets and recently they bought this Korean video player called MxPlayer for 140 million USD.
MxPlayer as it is designed well to play video files on Android devices, which is one of the main platform on which many India cell phone users rely on. Normally they go cheap and not big fans of expensive Iphones (sadly). Why Smule is in this mix? Not really sure. For the Times Internet, use of Smule as platform to advertise their launch of product MX player is ideal, since Smule says they have 52 million active subscribers worldwide. The India users spend more than average time on this app singing their hearts out.
So as a Smule user what is exciting for you guys about all this? An idea goes around for long is when Smule users want to do a live streaming show and run that as a paid streaming service allies like MxPlayer may be a good way for users to reach the audience. Apart from this for now there are some new age musicians like Amit Trivedi, Sachin-Jiggar, Vishal-Shekar join with Bollywood music legends to recreate the old time magic in diluted, convoluted versions. Like you get to sing Kishoreda and Mohammad Rafi songs in a form that is so destroyed from its original life. So we all get to hear and be tortured with this process. Sorry for being so negative, but so far that is what it looks like happening.
When Smule released Elvis, Whitney, Queen or any of that type of classics for its subscribers, it did not come like this. It was done beautifully re-mastered and was presented as it originally played. Why do we have to have great Mohammad Rafi, and Kishore da songs to be presented as destroyed manner? Really these kind of things anger many users of the App and as we see increasingly Smule is loosing its respect among the elite music circles, and is seen as a mere Karaoke singing app. We have seen the demise of such apps very quickly in the past. Smule is no way any better, and not immune to fall into such traps that none can rescue it from.
When listening to an Instagram conversation between the people who took this task like Amit Trivedi and Agni and Vishal Shekar etc., it looks like none of them realize how big a job this is and how irresponsible they all are with having produced such sub-standard tracks on Smule. Such projects need careful execution with enough time spent and more than anything “genius” to do it right.
MxPlayer signed Smule as the presenting sponsor and they use Smule as a platform to tell India Smule users about this musical extravaganza streaming free now on internet. So download this player and as they say there is some streaming happens somewhere (have no clue where and when, no proper information). It is at your risk that this player as you know can be used for hacking into your private videos on your phone. Read some user forums saying that such security breaches are secured on the player, who knows (da). TikTok, from China, and now MxPlayer, from Korea.
All in all, this video player and its free steaming of the India’s “old meet new” musical extravaganza seems to be a very poorly organized attempt they all talk a lot about. These type of shows are projected as sample of the future music shows, especially in the light of current COVID situation. The player is projected as poor mans’ streaming service provider app. Times Internet MD, Satyan Gajwani hoping that India’s ~1.39 billion population will buy the streaming services later on when they will start the music shows streaming online as a paid service. Mr. Satyan became the focus of Times business plans at age 26 when he married Mr. Jain’s daughter. Despite critiques, he remained respectful in the business circles. He gained respect by the way he conducted the media business from 2012 to 2020. The news sources say that in July 2020, Mr. Satyan’s most trusted right hand man Mr. Miten Sampat leaving times group who is also a main board member of MxPlayer business. People in business circles say replacing someone for this position won’t be an easy task.
The intense competition from other online streaming services that are popular already like Amazon music, Apple iTunes, is a hard to catch, when they cater quality stuff to its customers at very affordable prizes worldwide. But Times internet’s eye especially is on India and to cater this as ‘India’s poor mans’ streaming service provider; this may seem to be a great idea. But analysts are very doubtful, weather ‘poor man’ have time and mind set to spend their money on streaming music programs, while 68.8% of India’s population live in poverty. The target population for this business plan is a poor choice to begin with, which doesn’t need a genius mind to figure out.
Like this five years ago the company’s previous venture an OTT called BoxTV.com, shut down in 2016 after an underwhelming four-year period.(OTT stands for Over The Top is the buzz word right now – which is the future of internet streaming directly to customers over the internet).
Personally downloaded the MX Player and it looked like a very ordinary video player with no clear indications for user where the buttons to click and see this so called live streaming. No idea. Result, in five minutes into its download, it is deleted and gone from my phone. Good bye.
On smule app there is a Timesmusic ID, on which some musicians Mohan Kannan of Agnee band (An only band in India to sign a record label with Sony BMG) is on and asking people to join his invites. These uploaded tracks are really a very poor job of great Kishoreda and Rafi songs, in its re-making and presentation. A lack of genius in its content is the glaring void which makes it so sad to see happen. Does anybody care? We do.
The Smule earlier did a “1,2,3 Riyazz” with Jassie Gill from music industry. At least the content was presented with flavor and there was more bite into it for Smule users, in participation and highlight for their talent. That created excitement on the App users, had criticism, but now it look like was a better job than this one.
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A failure in understanding of the music market in India seems to be a looming problem for Smule right from the start. When comes to the choices in partnerships, Smule took the best of best India can offer. Even then, how this all go so wrong. A simple answer is hard to find. When a project is implemented and it trickles down to its execution, it get into the same old favoritism and politics. It is really hard to see a simple solution to Bollywood’s nepotism. Yet the question is, Smule as a user focused app did a fantastic job here in America to keep a lot of good musicians happy and have them all hooked onto the App happily; they must able to translate the same else where. When comes to quality music presentation, it is a no-brainier to think that put your money on the the best musician of that country, nothing less. Do not sign partnership with companies who use the app name for their advantage and rather try ways that benefit Smule directly. All the best wishes for Smule for a fantastic success in online streaming business in India.
