iWorld
MX Player & Akamai partner to deliver seamless viewing experience
KOLKATA: MX Player has partnered with Akamai Technologies to provide its increasing user base in India with a seamless digital experience.
In 2020, MX Player was ranked by App Annie as the no.1 streaming app in India and the onset of the pandemic saw the platform witness not just a massive boost in viewership, but also new subscribers, and a newer audience. This accelerated growth heightened MX Player’s need for infrastructure that could support the scale and availability of the app across different networks and locations.
MX Player found Akamai’s world class media delivery solution to be the right choice in order to deliver a high-quality viewing experience to their customers across different cities. The enhancement in performance and user experience was particularly pronounced in the case of MX TakaTak, a popular short video platform, that has seen a rapid surge of users, with a large portion of them coming from tier-2 and tier-3 towns.
According to Redseer, online content consumption in India grew by 35 per cent in April 2020 compared to January 2020. It further stated that short-form video content consumption recorded the most significant jump during the lockdown.
MX Player COO Vivek Jain said, “In the last couple of months, our user base has increased exponentially. The demand to consume content on the go and the need for virtual entertainment amongst the middle, mass, mobile, millennial audience in India is growing faster than ever before. MX Player has seen more than 7X jump in time spent on the app. “
“Even MX TakaTak, which we recently launched, crossed one billion video views per day within a month from launch and has quickly become the market leading app in the short video category. We have always obsessed about best-in-class video load times. Akamai is a pioneer in Edge distribution and its presence particularly in tier-2 and tier-3 towns has helped us deliver an unmatched viewing experience for our customers across India’s mega cities as well as the hinterlands,” Jain added.
Akamai media and carrier section India sales head Mitesh Jain noted that unprecedented demand for content coupled with rapidly evolving user behaviour poses a challenge for apps trying to ensure high-quality viewing experience across a complex network topology.
“We are glad to have partnered with MX Player to help them scale the user base and step up to conform with user expectations of evolving Indian consumers. Given MX player’s ambition, I am sure that this is just a start and we will be accomplishing many more milestones together,” Jain said.
iWorld
Anirudh Ravichander and Universal Music India join forces to take South India’s sound to the world
The composer behind 13 billion streams launches Albuquerque Records with UMI as its exclusive global partner
MUMBAI: Universal Music India has struck an exclusive partnership with Albuquerque Records, the freshly minted independent label of singer-composer Anirudh Ravichander, in a deal that bets big on South India’s booming pop and hip-hop scene going global.
The arrangement, announced on 17 March, will see Universal Music India handle future pop and hip-hop releases by Anirudh himself, as well as artists signed to the new label. A first release is already in the pipeline for April, featuring Anirudh.
The numbers behind the man are hard to ignore. Debuting in 2012 with the viral sensation “Why This Kolaveri Di”, Anirudh has since clocked over 13 billion audio streams across more than 770 tracks, cementing his position as the No.1 South Indian artist on Spotify by total streams. His fingerprints are all over some of the Tamil film industry’s biggest musical moments, from Hukum and Vaathi Coming to Arabic Kuthu and the A23 Theme.
But Albuquerque Records is a different beast. Built for the non-film space, it is designed to nurture independent talent and champion the next wave of Indian pop voices. “Universal Music India’s leadership in pop and hip-hop made them the natural partner,” said Anirudh. “I’m excited to take independent voices to audiences around the world.”
Universal Music India’s chairman and CEO Devraj Sanyal was equally effusive. “Anirudh represents the future of Indian music, bold, original, and with enormous potential,” he said. “Identifying transformative talent is our superpower, and this partnership reflects that belief.”
Sanujeet Bhujabal, managing director of Universal Music India, framed the deal as more than a distribution play. “Albuquerque Records represents Anirudh’s bold artistic vision in the world of pop and hip-hop,” he said. “True to his legacy of innovation, this partnership is set to establish yet another landmark creative space, this time for the emerging world of iPop and beyond.”
For Universal Music India, the deal deepens a long-running push into South India’s four key language markets: Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. The label already has regional imprints, film partnerships with Maddock Films and Excel Entertainment, and a growing non-film roster. Landing Anirudh, arguably the south’s most bankable music brand, is a statement of intent. South Indian music has the streams. Now it is coming for the world.
