BookMyShow widens audio offering after Jukebox acquisition

BookMyShow, the online movie ticketing firm, had acquired Jukebox some months back and now planning to enhance the audio entertainment platform with original and popular content across diverse genres. Jukebox offers users free music downloads through credits earned while booking movie tickets. It will now add a digital radio service that will allow users to listen to specially curated original audio shows and licensed global content. Aditya Kuber, associate vice president-audio entertainment at BookMyShow, said that “We also want to identify and promote new talent and work towards building the complete ecosystem around talk radio. It’s a category that we believe has tremendous potential”.

Unlike its competitors such as Saavn, Gaana and Hungama which charge the users, Jukebox does not charge a subscription fee. Ashish Hemrajani, CEO of BookMyShow, said that “In terms of revenue, we believe a subscription model does not give scale in India. So, for monetization, we are looking at branded content and embeds done in a lucid, frictionless manner for the user”. BookMyShow is banking on Jukebox as the gateway to audio entertainment business. Backed by the Stripes Group and Network18, it acquired on-demand video content platform Nfusion to build the entire tech backbone for Jukebox earlier this month.