The Qtel Group’s backstage music service brings bollywood to customers across group’s footprint

The Qtel Group’s popular mobile music service, Backstage, has announced the exponential growth of its online offering from 150,000 international musical tracks to more than 1,000,000 as a result of its tie-up with the worlds’ number one aggregator of Bollywood and South Asian entertainment, Hungama Mobile. 

The Bollywood genre of music is crucially important to Backstage’s growth in the GCC states in particular, as the GCC states collectively hold a significant expatriate population of residents from South Asia.  The Backstage-Hungama partnership will allow Backstage customers in Qatar, Kuwait and Oman to download the latest hits from Indian and Bollywood content as well as Pakistani, Afghani and Tamil music genres. 

Hungama Mobile’s content library includes recent hit music from films such as Tees Maar Khan, Dabanng, Band Baaja Baraat, and Three Idiots. Music from the films of leading superstars such as Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone are all part of Hungama’s catalogue and available to the Backstage service subscribers. 

Backstage offers unlimited music downloads for mobile phones and PCs, as well as privileged access to industry stars and music heroes. With the slogan “Live it First”, Backstage customers get exclusive material ahead of release dates and the chance to meet world-famous artists backstage, attend recording sessions, and win VIP concert tickets – enabling the Qtel Group to be the only operator in any of its markets – to offer a total music and entertainment service of this calibre. 

With an easy subscription process via SMS, PC or WAP, and for a minimal flat- rate monthly fee, customers can enjoy unlimited downloads from an international catalogue of now more than one million international tracks. 

Backstage customers can build their own collections, create playlists to suit their mood, search by track, artist, genre or album, and share playlists with other fans and friends, through a specially-designed interface. 

For English language musical tracks, Backstage has partnered with the world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, which represents a host of the most famous names in music, including Lady Gaga, Akon, Justin Bieber, Enrique Iglesias, Black Eyed Peas, Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Nelly Furtado, Stevie Wonder, Sting, and Kanye West, among many others. 

Backstage also offers unlimited access to two of the region’s most popular Arabic labels, Melody and Mazzika – which represent leading Arab artists including Amr Diab, Ragheb Alama, Haifa Wehbe, Myriam Fares, Abdallah El-Rweished, Angham, Asala, and many more – to provide a wide range of choice and value to customers. 

Backstage is now available through Qtel in Qatar, Nawras in Oman and Wataniya in Kuwait and is expected to roll out across the rest of the Group. 

The Backstage service demonstrates the Qtel Group’s continuing commitment to superior innovation and product differentiation.