Worldspace launches five online radio stations on MSN India

Working in tandem with MSN India, Worldspace has released five online radio stations on MSN India. The stations include Hindi classics, Kannada, Telugu, Carnatic and classical music. The subscription for the five channel package is $9.99 /- month. Future plans include bringing all 43 Worldspace channels online on MSN India.

via Hindu and ContentSutra

I tried out the service and following are my observations:

The site doesnt work on FireFox. I hardly use IE, but for the sake of trying out the service, I decided to fire up IE. After struggling for a bit, the darn media player finally opened up and I was able to hear the music. I gotta admit though, the streaming quality is top notch.

There are two things that I really dont understand though:

1) Why is the service being labeled as MSN Radio ? Other than a small MSN butterfly logo in the top right corner, I hardly see any MSN branding. I think this is a better deal for Worldspace in terms of branding (and of course a new revenue stream) than MSN. New user registration is required for the site. If the service were ‘MSN Radio’ in the true sense, I would have expected my MSN credentials to work for logging in. Besides, I wasnt even able to find a link to the site from the MSN India home page.

2) The subscription rate is $9.99/- for the five channels. These channels are more or less disjointed from each other - how many users are going to understand and like hindi, carnatic, telugu and kannada equally ? For someone like me, I’m going to be able to understand only the Hindi oldies and the classical channel. Assuming that Hindustani classical may not appeal to the majority, they will be able to enjoy only the Hindi oldies channel. So, effectively, potential subscribers from North India are getting access to only a Hindi oldies channel for $9.99/- month ? Just plain dumb…if you were to ask me.

Aah..But the NRI’s will suck up to such a service. I have my own doubts about that too. See, the Hindi oldies and the Hindustani classical channels - they arent going to be of much interest to the young and young adult NRI population.And this is the tech savvy NRI population we are talking about. The demographic that these channels will appeal to — they are relatively a bit less tech savvy and probably may not warm up to such a service.

What say ?

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Comments

2 Responses to “Worldspace launches five online radio stations on MSN India”

1. G Vishwanath on August 9th, 2007 9:32 pm

   $9.99 per month for just 5 channels?
   And you need a computer costing much more?
   And you need to keep the computer on?
   And you need an internet connection too?

   I pay about US $4 per month for Worldspace Radio in Bangalore.
   I get 40 channels.
   I don’t need a computer to listen.
   I don’t need an internet connection to listen.
   I just press the switch on the receiver to instantly start listening.
   The sound quality is excellent.

   The capital expenditure was about US $40 for the receiver, antenna and the remote control.
   I also invested US $65 for a set of speakers with subwoofer though this would not be necessary if I had chosen to connect the receiver to the music system at home or to the speakers attached to my computer at home.

   I thought this information would be of interest to you.
   Regards
   G Vishwanath

2. Gaurav on August 10th, 2007 12:02 am

   Pranav,

   Your second point was my first reaction. The subscription model doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t pay 9.99 just to listen Hindi oldies when I have so many free options, although legality of these stations may be in question.