The Hindu Business Line : Saregama setting up master server with 3 lakh songs

SAREGAMA India Ltd, the entertainment firm of the RPG Group, will be the first Indian company to set up a master server of three lakh songs, according to its Vice-Chairman, Mr Sanjiv Goenka.

The company has already digitised 35 per cent of its songs and hopes to complete the project by the end of March, 2006. The total cost has been estimated at Rs 2 crore.

"Anyone can download the songs from this server after paying a nominal fee. The purpose of setting up this server is to check piracy. We will be the first Indian music company to set up such a server," Mr Goenka told reporters after chairing Saregama's 58th annual general meeting.

He also gave details of the several initiatives taken by the company. For example, Saregama is making efforts to collect royalties from the TV companies using their songs. In this context, he said, Sony TV has recently paid such a royalty but he preferred not to disclose the amount.

Saregama is focusing on the ring-tone business too. It would be using the old songs that it has in its archives for this purpose. The company, Mr Goenka said, is now available on all the major e-carriers.

Regarding film production, he said, work is on on eight films but they were in different stages of production. Out of these, two are in Bengali, one is a cross-over film with an Amercian director and the rest five are in Hindi.

Meanwhile, the company is currently conducting "brain-storming" sessions to identify future business areas.

The company is also going in for corporate sales in a big way. It had already delivered on lakh CDs to ICICI. A similar was struck for the corporate office of the RPG Group.

"We are also holding talks with several other big companies for their Diwali and New Year gifts but I would not be able to give further details of it", he said.

Mr Goenka is expecting major bottom-line growth for Saregama. "This is one company where you will hardly see much of a top-line growth because a lot of the earnings will be from royalty," he explained.

He, however, ruled out Saregama buying any high budget music rights of any film in future. Instead, the company will prefer to enter into a revenue sharing model. For the year ended March 31, 2005, Saregama recorded a turnover of Rs 100.87 crore a net profit of Rs 5.21 crore.

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