Recently, the telecommunication company unveiled its latest online music platform MTN Music + the first in the country for its customers.
In South Africa digital music is experiencing high growth driven mainly by local artists.
Maxwell Takalani Nonge, Chief Digital Officer: MTN SA commented during media brief that: “The revamped Music+ strengthens our focus on developing local content and contributing meaningfully to the development of the music industry in South Africa. At the heart of our endeavours into the music space is the firm belief that we need to partner with artists and empower them to take control over the success of their brand.
The revised functionality of Music+ is the first proposition of its kind in South Africa where digital music and data are bundled for the user’s convenience and ease of use. This means that if a customer has an active bundle, any activity that they perform on Music+ will be zero-rated.”
Although the question of why international music was given more preference (60%) than local (40%) was not answered, Music+ new functionalities include the following; a music library with over 670 000 tracks; music downloads with innovative music bundle download packages; pricing will include data costs and subscribers will be levied discounted downloading costs.
The streaming pricing will be tiered by daily, weekly and monthly subscription fees, and downloading prices for subscribers will be discounted.
In keeping up with world’s trends, a research in 2014 revealed that global digital music revenues had overtaken physical music revenues and downloads and subscriptions accounted for 75% of this revenue.
Physical music sales have declined by 17%, while digital music sales are increasing by 9%.
MTN is moving to improve its fibre broadband offering to consumers by consolidating its new, stand- alone business unit (media space, fibre to the home- FTTH- to the business and mobile money) separated from its marketing department.
“As a company that always strives to stay ahead of the curve, we believe that this revamped proposition mirrors the trends in the music space and resonates with our customer’s demands.
We believe that the revised offering will also help to combat piracy which is the nemesis of the music industry, and will further bolster the live music market in South Africa.”
As MTN, we want to be at the forefront of this revolution and leverage our infrastructure to ensure that our customers and the industry benefit from this changing eco-system,” continued Nonge.
The MTN Music + to be charged at R3, 50 will go live very soon.
