MUMBAI: Composer and singer Sanjay Maroo launched an online music download site containing a range of his songs for online users using Rediff.com as the launch portal.

This association between Sanjay Maroo and Rediff.com an online provider of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services for Indians will enable millions of Sanjay’s fans worldwide to download his songs with digital quality for as little as Rs 10 per song.

Rediff.com approached Akamai Technologies, a global service provider for accelerating Web content and business processes online, and chose Akamai Media Delivery Solution to enable the secure download of the songs. Rediff’s e-commerce payment gateway seamlessly integrated with Akamai’s secure delivery and download service, making Rediff.com India’s first online music e-tailer.

Akamai Technologies director Asia Pacific region Stuart Spiteri said, “The demand for media of all types—music, movies, games, and more—is enormous and growing rapidly. However, there are many challenges to successfully monetizing media assets online. This means media need to be supported in all popular formats compatible with multiple end-user devices and platforms. Businesses also need to be able to protect and track the use of their media assets to ensure they are being used properly and verify that only authourised consumers are accessing them. Rediff.com has been using Akamai’s scaleable and performance-oriented content delivery solutions since 2000, so we were their natural choice to provide this value-added service.”

Rediff.com CTO Venki Nishtala says, "Akamai Media Delivery has been instrumental in revolutionising the content delivery arena and enabling efficient monetization of media content. Akamai has been providing increased scalability, availability and performance for our Web site for close to five years, and they were a natural choice for powering our online music initiative.”

Maroo says, “Rediff is one of the most trusted content providers on the Indian webscape and users’ trust is very important in any dealing. Secure sites exist all over, but the image and the trust comes only with time and experience. When this partnership with Rediff came along and it was decided that Akamai would be providing the download platform, it gave me satisfaction as I knew I was in technically perfect and safe hands with Akamai's experience in the field.”