Hungama’s new entertainment store went live beta recently. Neeraj Roy (Hungama CEO) and Co have had this in the works for a while, but most of what it’s about has been hush-hush. Roy didn’t talk much about it at the Nokia Music Connects conference in Mumbai last month that he was a panelist at, even as Nokia unveiled its own music store.

But here it is. Hungama’s foray into online entertainment retail. The first time the digital media company is retailing directly to consumers.

Is this India’s answer to iTunes? Is it better than Nokia’s music store? Is any or all of Gary Lawyer’s extensive catalogue available for purchase? We may not have absolute answers to all these questions (though no luck Lawyer fans) but we do have these impressions.

The Basics
The Hungama store currently sells music in the form of MP3s/WMAs (depending on how you purchase), music videos as WMVs/3GP (for PC/mobile) and mobile wallpapers. Bollywood is what Hungama finds itself peddling the most. And hey, we can’t blame them. They’ve apparently got exclusive rights to 500,000 music and video titles, so most of what you’ll find here is entirely Hindi film related.

Interface
The UI is pretty simple. The site borrows a lot from Apple’s iTunes interface (cover flow, et al). While the Hungama myPlay player (like the iTunes music player – a lot, see screenshot) isn’t available for download just yet, we’re pretty sure that, like the site itself, it will be a no-brainer. There is a browser based myPlay music player which will play clips of the songs you ‘wish’ to purchase, or songs that you have paid for.

The search bar is a little painful right now. A search for “Gary Lawyer” (within inverted commas) threw up, among other artists, Bappi Lahiri and Bappa Lahiri.

Look familiar?

Pricing
Hungama’s got its pricing spot on and for that, we must give it props. There are three tiers of pricing. A single download (music/video/wallpaper) costs Rs 10. For Rs 20 you get a ‘value pack’ which is basically four of anything (music/video/wallpaper) – working out to a terribly economical Rs 5 a pop. These two options allow you to download DRM free MP3s/WMVs/3GPs for a maximum of three times. It’s by far the most sensible/economical pricing plan we have seen for digital media retail in India. Heck, we even talked about this on national TV -  if you don’t get the pricing right, no one has the incentive to stay legal. Even our indies struggle with it. But Bollywood, for all that we complain about it, knows its shit – you have to get make the product (regardless of the editorial quality) available to the people as easily as possible. That’s why Moser Baer sells Bollywood DVDs at the price it does.

Hungama also has a subscription model (priced at a very reasonable Rs 99) that allows users access to the entire library, but via DRM protected WMAs/WMVs/3GPs and requires the myPlay software to be installed on PCs and mobile devices. While DRM protection is a peeve, at the price, the value offering is hard to pass up. And hey, DRM free is just five bucks a pop.

We’re disappointed though that there is no pricing plan for whole albums. Still, Bollywood’s mostly about the singles right?

Props to Hungama for getting this right.

No Indies
We’re told Hungama may have something separate in store for Indian indies, but currently no Indian indie artist is represented. Indipop however finds a spot.

Random Observations
The site is still in beta, so there are a few bugs. The search, as we mentioned earlier, can be a pain. Grammar nazis will spot a lot of typos and well, just a lot of poor grammar. The UI has a very beta feel – some fonts, graphics, etc just don’t fit right.

Myself Hungama FAQs section. I am pleased to be meeting with you.

Overall, Hungama seems to have put together a well thought through consumer proposition driven mostly by its liberal usage of Apple’s design sensibilities and a great pricing strategy. We’re looking forward to what the public release will add to this.

What say you?