It’s all about the mobile downloads, stupid

I get the Indian music industry’s focus on the mobile market given that a whole generation of Indians have leapfrogged the internet revolution and jumped on to the mobile revolution. A plethora of companies and services have sprung up around this market and this ought to be good for the customers. Only, it isn’t. I mean look at this insert I found in a CD I bought recently:

Is this the best the mobile download industry could come up with? You want me to download that ringtone – please don’t make me work for it. Much has been said about advertising and subliminal messages. Did any of the marketing guys involved here think about the message something like this might send to the customer? After I got past the “Whoa! This is complicated” phase, the next thing that hit me is the greed and desperation that emanates from this flyer. There is money to be made from ringtone downloads and everyone wants a piece of the action – music labels, mobile operators, “value added” service providers. Forget the complexity and the messaging, does the damn thing actually work? After deriving the algorithm for BSNL from this insert, I tried setting a ring back tone only to have my SMS disappear in thin air. But that’s just me giving it a single try. I would be really interested in hearing from people who have tried downloading music on their mobiles in India using legal methods like the ones listed on the insert. What has your experience been?

(An aside for corporate folks: The phrase “value added” really, really ticks off customers, specially because it’s almost always attached to the most expensive item on their bills. You use it to tell yourselves that you are going above and beyond, that you are expanding your market, that you are doing “high end” work. Unless, of course, you are being refreshingly honest and what you are really implying is that your other services do not add value! The customers do not really care whether a service is regular or “value added” in your opinion. Save the phrase for internal presentations if you must, but please spare the customers.)