Elevating the music experience: Hungama.com's Siddhartha Roy

Hungama.com, a part of Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. is one of the largest aggregator, developer, publisher and distributor of Bollywood and South-Asian entertainment content in the world. The company has partnerships with over 400 content creators, record labels, studios, broadcasters, game publishers on a worldwide exclusive basis for digital and mobile content. Hungama serves content to consumers in 47 countries across mobile, internet and IPTV services on a Managed Services Platform.

The company launched India’s first and largest on-demand digital entertainment destination, www.hungama.com.  The storefront has over two and half million pieces of content across genres and languages, in the form of music tracks, movies, music videos & dialogues; mobile content such as ringtones & wallpapers. Hungama Movies has over 5000 Bollywood, Hollywood, Regional Indian Movies and Television Series available in both HD SD and quality, powered by Intel Insider.

For more information Adgully caught up with Siddhartha Roy, Chief Operating Officer, Consumer Business & Allied Services. His key responsibilities lie in strengthening the digital marketing initiatives with Hungama Digital; and the gaming business with Hungama Games Studio.

Speaking about launching Hungama Music app and explaining the rationale behind it, he said, “We wanted to offer something that matches the growing technology and wanted to give a unique offering to our customers an audio-video product. It is quite well known that Indian audiences like to hear a song while watching a video hence we got this product which caters best to our audience. With the launch of this app, Hungama.com, breaks the competitive digital music market by not only bringing unique ‘never-before’ features, but also elevating your music listening experience by allowing you to watch videos and socialise while streaming your favourite bollywood, regional and international music.”

The game changing app, introduces for the first time, a Loyalty feature that rewards you for every action on the app. You can earn (and redeem) points every time you watch videos, play/share music, invite friends or even create playlists.

Mood Discovery, another first, finds and plays music to match your mood. This feature allows you to discover music based on your preferences – Mood, Tempo, Language, Genre or Era.

In terms of promotion, digital would be the main focus. There will be a lot of on-ground activations too. Giving a sense of the market that they are in, Roy said, “Well the market is growing quite robustly. About 87 per cent of the music sharing is happening online that is digitally. The smart phone category has also grown quite literally at the rate of 50 per cent. So our idea is to bring and leverage the market audience with exciting and innovative products.”

What makes the Hungama.com app better than your current options?        

Audio/Video Streaming & Download: Experience the joy of music like never before! Hungama.com app allows you to not only stream unlimited music, but also enjoy music videos. The app also allows you to buy and download entertainment content on your connected devices. You can even experience music intelligence with an add-on feature which brings interesting trivia and lyrics with just a touch.

Mood Discovery: Music that plays to your moods. The Mood Discovery feature allows you to play with different options like happy, party, romantic etc. If you love the choices, you can simply save the discovery list and replay anytime anywhere.

Loyalty & Gamification: If you love being the music ninja and beating your friends with your music knowledge, the Hungama app allows you to be a pro gamer with an exceptional loyalty program that rewards you for every action on the app. You can earn points every time you watch videos, play/share music, invite friends or even create playlists. Once collected, the points can be redeemed to download and own content, movie tickets, autographed merchandise, gizmos and gadgets and dinner dates with film stars.

Artist Radio: With over 20,000 artistes on Hungama.com, you have access to a massive music pool. Tune in to your favourite celeb’s music playlist on Artist Radio feature.

Social Music: The ‘My Stream’ option allows you to invite, share and connect with your friends online through social networking platforms and create waves of interesting music conversations online. My Stream also allows you to share your music and personal playlists; and continue to pocket more ‘coins’ upon sharing with friends.

Hungama’s journey seems quite eventful. Sharing some of the recent success stories, Roy said, “the journey has been quite interesting full of successful apps and the recent one includes this launch.”  The Hungama music app is available on the iOS, Android platforms and a lite version is available on the Blackberry 10.