MUMBAI: That Bollywood music is ruling the roost is known but it is not essentially contemporary Bollywood music that rules, apparently.
To track top ranking Bollywood music every week, Ormax Media has launched a new tracking tool – �Heartbeats'. This syndicated product has been created primarily for broadcasters (TV and radio), advertisers and content producers.
With the first report out last week, �Heartbeats' will feed the music and the radio industries with consumer preferences and track top 20 current favourite Bollywood songs The findings will be released on a weekly basis at a national level.
Talking about the new development Ormax Media director Vispy Doctor says, Earlier, retail sales were often used to measure song popularity. However, with diminishing retail sales and wide-spread digital downloads there is no evident index to gauge the popularity of a song today. In this scenario, Heartbeats becomes a very powerful tool, especially for the radio and music television industry.
Heartbeats is based on the results of consumer interviews conducted every week across Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Indore Ormax Media director Shailesh Kapoor reasons, Mumbai and Delhi are key radio markets and the other three cities are culturally diverse and reasonably matured radio markets. Looking at the client response and their city preference we might add on more cities under out belt.... Post the five cities, Heartbeats foresees Kolkata, Jaipur and Chandigarh as potential markets for Bollywood music tracking.
Heartbeats will be directly relevant to broadcasters, as it will help them take more informed programming decisions and film producers and advertisers backing the film to gauge performance of the film's music, before and after its release. Kapoor asserts, Looking at the consumer preferences, the film makers can promote the song that clicks with the audience and discard the ones that don't have a recall on a weekly basis. Radio stations and music channels can also prioritise their playlists according the music priorities of the consumers rather than just popularity....
The research involves asking the respondents their current favourite Hindi film song. A minimum of 500 respondents are being currently sampled per week and the demographics include males and females between 15-34 years in SEC AB.
Kapoor is of the opinion that besides ranking of individual songs, Heartbeats will provide valuable information like regional diversities, current favorite in a top album etc. Citing an example he explains further, In the first week's report, though Dhan Te Nan was the No. 1 song at a national level, it was No. 3 in Delhi, behind two Punjabi songs (Aahun Aahun and Dil Bole Hadippa). Also, it is important to know when a song (like Twist from Love Aaj Kal) actually begins to drop in its popularity, out of over-exposure or fatigue, and is replaced by another song from the same album. In this week's report, while Love Aaj Kal has four songs in the top 10, the most favourite song from the film today is not Twist or Chor Bazaari, but Yeh Dooriyan....
Having launched today with their first week data, Ormax Media is looking forward to providing subscribed data to Music channels, radio stations and film makers. Ormax Media specialises in research and consultancy in the media and entertainment industry.