More than 4 million music tracks are available in India's Ovi Music store with the majority comprised of local music. In addition to more than 150 local labels (including T-Series, Yash Raj Music, Venus, Saregama, Tips), there is also support for the major international labels. There's also support for regional languages such as Malayalam, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil and Marathi.
"Music is broken into 19 genres mixing the usual Rock, Rap and Hip Hop with the local Bollywood, Sufi and Indipop. The localisation doesn’t stop there though, with full metadata with each track, users can search for music by actor, actress or movie."
Metadata is particularly important in the India market where a large proportion of music may be better known by its association with a particular movie, rather than the original artist. Nokia are also providing a top track listing of Bollywood (film) related music.
Nokia is also allowing users to download music using multiple PCs (in contrast to other markets where only one PC can be used) to allow for the fact that many users of the service will not own their own PC. This means users can use computers at Nokia dealers and Internet cafes to download music to their phone.
The various local customisations are a good example of how Nokia is adjusting it services to better meet the demands of local markets. A further example, in the music domain, is Nokia's recent launch of a DRM-Free Comes with Music service in China.
Nokia's unlimited Music service is now available in a number of countries including Austria, Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Further details are available on the Ovi Music Unlimited site and Nokia Conversations blog.