Tuesday 7 July 2015

Amazon India sees high growth in music category

E-commerce major Amazon India has recorded a 20-25% month-on-month growth in sales in its musical instruments and professional audio segment, according to a top company executive. 

Amazon had launched its 'musical instruments & professional audio store' as a part of its music category in November 2014. 

"There are limited numbers of offline stores in India to serve the musical needs of billions of people," said Samir Kumar, director of category management at Amazon India. "So we launched 'musical instruments & professional audio store' to address the inherent challenges customers faced in purchasing musical instruments, mainly due to limited selection and information available at any one place." 

Across the country there are only 500-700 stores for musical instruments, according to Kumar. 

On Amazon India, electronic keyboards, DJ consoles, acoustic guitars and recorders are the best-selling items in its musical instruments & professional audio store. According to Kumar, professional audio is a fast-growing segment, including products like DJ mixers, DJ headphones, microphones and studio monitors. Low-cost acoustic guitars are also doing well, he said. 

With over 12,000 musical instruments on its platform, Amazon.in is reaching to not only metros and mini-metros, but also to smaller towns and cities. 

In addition to the top eight cities, Amazon has seen demand from smaller cities like Kottayam (Kerala), Karwar (Karnataka), Jharsuguda (Odisha) and Bodinayakanur (Tamil Nadu), among others, said Kumar. 

To promote the category, Amazon has partnered with Sennheiser professional, a German audio company specialising in design and production of a wide range of consumer audio products, to launch a leaderboard campaign for emerging bands in India. 

Open to all the emerging or semi-professional bands of the country, this is India's first digital contest inviting bands of all genres - pop, rock, fusion, classic or blues. The winners will be selected through online voting and a panel of judges including Sennheiser endorsers such as Salim-Sulaiman and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. 

Amazon.in launched the 'music category' in February 2014, offering 600,000 albums from all leading national and international labels, including eight major Indian language stores in music - Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Sanskrit, Bengali, Gujarati and Punjabi. 

The audio CD and vinyl store at Amazon.in is growing at nearly 100% within the music category, according to the company. 

Compilations of popular Indian artists such as Arijit Singh, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar, among others, and film soundtracks by composers such as AR Rahman and Amit Trivedi are popular with music customers on Amazon.in. New releases by renowned international artists such as Taylor Swift, Mark Knofler, One Direction and classic albums by legendary artists such as Michael Jackson, Abba and Pink Floyd also do well. In the spiritual and wellness genre, 'Garbh Sanskar' is a popular theme. 

"As we move ahead, we will continue to add selections across all categories in our music and musical instruments stores, Kumar said.

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