Vi Starts Offering Users With Free Access to Premium Music Streaming

Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea) on Monday announced its partnership with Hungama Music to launch a music streaming offering through the dedicated Vi app. Under the partnership, Vi prepaid and postpaid users will get six months of Hungama Premium subscription for free that will bring ad-free music content in 20 languages across genres from Hungama’s library of songs. Vi subscribers will also get a chance to attend 52 live digital concerts on the Vi app. The new announcement comes months after the telco announced its plans to launch a music streaming service for its subscribers.

As a result of the tie-up, Vi users will get access to songs as well as unlimited downloads from endless playlists, podcasts, and music videos through Hungama Music using the Vi app. Both prepaid and postpaid subscribers to the Vi network will also get the ability to set callertunes while listening to their favourite tracks.

“Our association with Hungama will allow Vi users to get access to a rich repository of diverse music, across genres and in their preferred language,” said Avneesh Khosla, CMO, Vi, in a prepared joint statement.

In addition to music streaming via Hungama Music, the Vi app will also offer subscribers access to attend 52 live digital concerts per year at a nominal cost. The operator is, however, yet to reveal the exact pricing of attending the concerts.

“We are excited to be a part of Vi’s 250+ million-strong customers’ musical journey. Our association with Vi has seen us introduce a first-of-its-kind Pay Per View service model in India’s exploding Premium Video On Demand (PVOD) market, earlier this year,” said Neeraj Roy, Founder, Hungama Digital Media, in the statement.

In August, Vi MD and CEO Ravinder Takkar revealed the plans to launch a music streaming service for customers. That announcement was followed by the introduction of the new Vi app that integrates the earlier Vi Movies & TV app and doubles as an over-the-top (OTT) platform.

By partnering with Hungama Music, Vi would compete against Airtel and Jio. The former has Wynk Music as its native music streaming service, while the latter has JioSaavn to attract customers with a large music library.