Xiaomi launches Mi Music, Mi Video in India

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has emerged as one of the most dominant players in the domestic market for smartphones over the last two years. India is their biggest market outside of their home country and the numbers are reportedly expected to double in terms of sales by 2020. The growing customer base has driven the brand to be dynamic and venture into more value-added internet services for local users. In an announcement at a Mi Pop Play event, held in Mumbai, the company launched the Mi Music and Mi Video streaming services in India last month.     Mi Music is Xiaomi’s pre-installed music app offering an integrated streaming service as well as a feature to store offline music. Being a fundamental stakeholder of Hungama, Xiaomi has partnered with Hungama Music to source the content of it’s Mi Music app. The users can listen up to 10 million ‘freemium’ tracks across 13 Indic languages for free. The app also allows them to integrate local music on the device. Similar to the lines of Saavn, Gaana, Google Play Music, the users have to pay a premium fee to subscribe to Hungama Pro if they wish to download music for offline listening. The premium subscription comes at a price of Rs. 899 per annum, however as an introductory offer, the cost has been lowered down to Rs. 499 per annum for the next three months.

We are delighted to launch Hungama Music on Mi Music. We are committed to delivering the best of content with unlimited playlists to the highly engaged Mi Fan community and with this launch we take our partnership with Xiaomi to the next level. In the coming months we will bring more exciting features including gamification and continue to build on the rich user experience. - Neeraj Roy, Managing Director & CEO, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.

One standout characteristic of the Mi Music app is the ‘Dynamic Lyrics’ feature which enables a user to have a karaoke experience. Lyrics can be seen on the device while a song is being played and a user can play the song from any point.  The company also announced its plans to add music videos, recommendations, themes and increase the library of the Mi Music app.  

Speedy growth of Mi Music in India

MIUI is Xiaomi’s proprietary operating system developed based on the Android kernel, featuring significant customization and localization to adapt to consumers’ user habits. Mi Music in India has nearly 7 million daily active users and is one of the most popular apps on the MIUI platform.

Xiaomi’s core belief lies in providing high-quality products with the best specs, at an honest pricing. We are able  to do this because of our business model — we provide our smartphones and other hardware at affordable pricing, aiming to monetize our MIUI Internet services in the long run. With the launch of these two apps Mi Music and Mi Video, we hope to serve millions of Xiaomi smartphone users with a better user experience through enhanced Internet services. - Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India 

Xiaomi is justifying its vision to deliver innovation by indulging in the production of high-quality, well-designed products and services accessible easily at a minimal price. Music Inc. is a conference that aimed at finding solutions on how to improve the packaging of music as a product by aligning it to media, advertising, brands, and technology. The conference is a push towards a collaborative effort for creating innovative music experiences.