last week vijay antony surprised his fans by announcing that they could download the songs of his upcoming film from his website free of cost the actorcomposer says that he decided to go this route because he wanted to promote his film typically songs gets pirated a couple of hours after their release i am looking at this issue from the point of view of a music technician we put in so much effort to make the song technically good so i am worried about the loss in quality when people rip from the original and post them on pirated sites im not saying that i have come up with extraordinary songs here these are normal songs which dont need too much hype but still i did work hard on them so by giving out these songs in a high quality as free im ensuring the people listen to my songs as i want them to says vijay antony explaining the rationale behind his decision shahir muneer the director of divo a digital music label feels that more than a business decision this approach makes more sense as a visibility and marketing approach he says today online streaming has become the preferred choice for people who want to listen to music and the figured has doubled since last year thanks to highspeed mobile internet connections but there is still a sizable number of people download music both legally and from pirated sites though this number is decreasing year by year here vijay antony is primarily competing with the platforms that facilitate piracy and this could make people opt to download his films music legally rather than go to pirated sites chidambaram ceo trend music calls this a marketing gimmick that will have very little effect on the music business music has stopped being a dependable revenue stream for the last few years and the revenue is not exactly from the audio a few years ago value added services vas like caller tunes formed 70 per cent of the revenue but today 80 of the revenue is from freetouse platforms like youtube streaming apps like gaana itunes and saavn and playoffs on radio in the south there is no concept of royalty from television playoffs but in the north thanks to influential labels like tseries this forms a sizable revenue so with people consuming music more from streaming services offer songs as freetodownload does not make much of a difference such a move can get people to take note if it is for a big movie like 20 or involves ar rahman or anirudh whose diehard fans still want to listen to their music in the highest quality possible he says and adds that the film team will still be monetising the songs when they get streamed in the freetouse platformsvijay antony says that he took this decision without analysing too much about the likely loss in revenue and not with the intention of bringing in a change for me reach