MUMBAI: The audience for music related content has been increasing and the discussion at the Nokia Music Connect finally came down to streaming services in India and the best way to monetise the same. On the panel for the discussion 'The Streaming Story’, were Head of Music- Asia Pacific, YouTube Anthony Zameczkowski; Director of Digital, Beggars Group Simon Wheeler; VP and Business Head, Gaana.com Pawan Agarwal; Executive Director-Writer/Publisher Relations, Europe and Asia, BMI Brandon Bakshi; Sr. Legal Counsel-Entertainment, Nokia, Albert Pastore, and Director-Digital, Sony Music India, Hari Nair.

Sharing interesting facts with the audience and delegates, Anthony highlighted the huge increase in the online streaming audience from four to six billion a day on YouTube and the number of hours of content uploaded per day also seems to have increased to 100 hours, the reason being improvement in the infrastructure. "There seems to have been a huge shift in the audiences from the laptop/computers to mobile devices," he added.

Adding to this, Hari Nair spoke about streaming going up and the wide gap between the demand and supply, given the present day business models, which, in his opinion, need to be developed. Talking a little more on streaming being a phenomenal opportunity, Pawan Agarwal added, "The problem is piracy. People just do not want to pay." He spoke about a model which could be implemented in India where the user will be required to simple pay Rs 50-99 per month (USD 1-2) to stream and download unlimited music content, which can work, owing to the feasibility of the model. Pawan was then gently reminded by the panelists that users would rather pay for the experience than for the content and how the audience consumes content from various sources.

With people not wanting to pay for content, the only other way of monetising this content would be streaming, which is something that YouTube channels and content aggregators rely on. People listen to a song, stream, and then re-stream, which in turn generates revenue. Along with the interaction, with the medium, the audiences are also exposed to a large variety of content to choose from. Looking at it from a business perspective, streaming helps better understand audience patterns, since downloads and buying CDs do not tell much about the life of the song post acquiring, compared to streaming, which is measured. This helps create a more effective business model for artistes, service providers, content aggregators and so on. The session concluded with the view of streaming moving to be a quintessential monetising platform.