Mxit moves into music distribution

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 22 Aug 2007

Cellular instant messaging company Mxit is experimenting with music distribution, targeting the mainly "young and hip" audience who make up the majority of its users, says Mxit GM Paul Stemmet.

Mxit will also become the official voting medium for talent search show "South African Idols" later this year.

Last night, the Cape-based company launched the first album by a new band "III", with an eye to selling its tracks over the IM service at a cost of 500c for two tracks, or 90c for a ringtone.

Mxit says it is still finalising the model for distributing music across its service; however, an announcement should be made within the next two months.

"The majority of the five million users are young, energetic and are big users of technology and great consumers of content. We have to keep developing content to keep their attention," Stemmet says.

The move into music distribution is seen as a way to help Mxit boost its revenue. The service is free, with users paying only for the cellular GPRS services charged by the network operators. However, Mxit has been gaining revenue from its premium chat rooms, the downloading of games and advertising.

Cheaper alternative

Independent music producer Gabbie le Roux approached Mxit six months ago with the idea of using the service to distribute music.

"Traditional music companies have lost touch with today's market. Young people are hip, they move fast and they want their music now at the lowest possible cost. The traditional model is proving to be far too expensive," he says.

Le Roux and Stemmet say they first tried music distribution by allowing the downloading of some of III's tracks on the Youth Day public holiday (16 June) and within a few hours recorded 25 000 downloads.

"Since then, more than 60 000 of their tracks have been downloaded, meaning they have passed platinum status [50 000 sales]," Le Roux says.

The band III is a cross-rock, kwaito and rap band. Le Roux says this kind of cross-genre band is ideal for the country's youth, who are not adverse to using converged technologies to keep entertained.

The band consists of two brothers, Brian and Andrew Chaplin (descendants of Charlie Chaplin), and kwaito artist Gavin Phike.