MUMBAI: With a severe drop in sales of music CDs, retail outlets are banking on other options to sustain their stores. Planet M, the leading music store in India, will soon introduce digital music downloading in their stores all across the country.

Planet M operating business head, Mumbai Amod Naik says, “We are working on the concept at present. The idea is to walk hand in hand with the trends and digital music is the future. With the augment of digital downloading, the sales of CDs, especially Bollywood, are going down. Hence, we need to work around the new concepts of music, as that’s our forte.”

The stores will have kiosks placed with the downloading software and customers can download the songs available with the store.

Talking about the returns, he says, “We are facing a loss because of reduced purchase of music CDs. I am sure this will benefit us as we assure quality. We will be tying up with content providers and music companies. And the songs can be downloaded at a particular price.”

The store which has 75 outlets at present plans to bring out a few more branches by 2008 and the new concept will be introduced by Diwali this year. In the intital phase, not all branches will have this facility. However, going forward the kiosks will be rolled out in most of the outlets.

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