Flipkart – the online megastore or you can say the Indian version of Amazon has launched online music store to let you purchase individual song or complete album with legal rights. After the acquisition of Mime360.com and Chakpak.com by Flipkart in October/November 2011, it was expected that the company is planning to launch or may launch a digital music store very soon. Finally the service is available for public as well.
After the launch of Junglee.com (Amazon’s price comparison service) in India in January, 2012, Flipkart acquired Letsbuy (another online store in India with really good market share of online electronics items sale). Now they have launched another service i.e. music store to get maximum out of their existing and new buyers. Flipkart’s music store is named as ‘Flyte’ which is like Apple’s iTunes where you can purchase music, movies and other media files. Flyte is restricted to music only.
On Flyte, you can purchase a song for as low as Rs. 6.00 i.e. 12 cents from there. The music files available on Flyte are DRM (Digital Rights Management) Free which means there will be no restriction on playing the purchased songs on multiple devices and you also don’t need to deal with lot many other steps before playing that song.
FYI, music files available on iTunes are also DRM Free and even Amazon Digital Music Store also offers the DRM Free music.
How to purchase songs from Flipkart
After browsing the music store catalogue on Flipkart, you decide to purchase a song or complete album or few selected songs from there, here is the procedure that you follow to get that song.
1. Add the music album or song to the digital cart and checkout with the details
2. After the complete payment, you will receive a file with .fkdm extension i.e. the file name ends with FKDM. This file is having all the information about the songs that you have purchased.
This file will not play on your music player as you still not having the music files yet.
3. Download (~4.3 MB) and install the “Flyte Download Manager” on your computer. The software is available for Windows and Mac operating systems. Linux version is expected very soon.
4. Now locate the .fkdm file that you had received from Flipkart on Flyte Download Manager.
5. Flyte DM will start downloading the purchased music files (MP3) from Flipkart.
6. You can play the mp3 files on your music devices or players and enjoy the DRM Free music on multiple devices.
Any restrictions with Flipkart Music Store
Legal music (especially the digital downloads) always comes with some restriction. On Flipkart Music Store, the only restriction is that you are allowed to download the purchased music files only for up to 5 times. Yes, the download limit is 5 for Flipkart Music Store – Flyte.
There are lot many online music streaming services in India where you can enjoy your favorite music online. For example, the services like Saavn.com, in.com, Gaana.com are among the popular ones to enjoy free songs online. But if you want to have legal rights and to play the song even offline, you need to purchase or download that. Flipkart Music Store will definitely boost the legal music purchases in country like India where piracy is a big concern for music industry. On Internet, people use to download the pirated music from services like songs.pk which are not legal as well as reliable at all.
I would advice you to either enjoy the online streaming of the free songs available on above services or even on YouTube or go and buy your favorite album (even a single song) on music stores like Flipkart.
Note – Flipkart acquired Letsbuy for $25 Million after Junglee launch to remain as the number one online megastore for books, gadgets and lot many other things.