Xiaomi launches their new Mi Music and Mi Video app services at Mi Pop Play Event.

Credits: Editorial Team

            So up until now, we've seen the Xiaomi focusing on the mobile segment in the Indian Market, that being said the company has also started on expanding their portfolio with the recent launch of the Mi TVs. While as a contradiction to the first statement 2nd May 2018 marks the day, Xiaomi enters the market of providing content aggregation services hoping to offer a complete ecosystem to their users. Yesterday at their iconic Mi Pop Play event, they made two announcements, Mi Music and Mi Video - where the company showcased how they've got some tricks up their sleeves to compete with the leading content providers and on-boarding several content aggregators. Getting on to the technicalities, both of these newest services would come preloaded on their handsets, while if you're interested about these offerings, you can go ahead and download them right now to get a broader view. Though the apps available on the MI App Store are currently available only for Xiaomi Devices, Users can also opt-in to beta programs. So let's get into the details of both these apps bit by bit, as we've used both these apps and we do have our initial thoughts on them.

Xiaomi launches their new Mi Music and Mi Video app services at Mi Pop Play Event. 

Mi Music: Streaming updates. 

Credits: Editorial Team

             Mi Music is an app-based service where the users can enjoy online music streaming for free. The app is relatively simple and easy to use consisting of gesture components. This minimal design felt well thought off according to us. The Mi Music service will provide you an unlimited lifetime streaming for free across all genres and languages. They quoted that Mi Music has about 10 Million freemium songs for users to stream from the first day itself. This app even allows users to sync their local music files stored on their phone. The company has tied up with Hungama Music which helps them to offer even more content from it aggregators which consists of more than 400 partners. Speaking about the key highlights, Xiaomi pointed out that the new Mi Music app offers Dynamic Lyrics letting users have the taste of Karaoke like experience. We tried this feature in particular at the event, and it's one of the key highlights. Here the user gets to scroll through the lyrics and stop precisely at the line he wants and then gets the option to tap play at the end of the line. Although the implementation is proper, we would've liked if the user had the opportunity to directly scroll through the lyrics and then select the entire line for it to play/pause, instead of the particular part.

Credits: Editorial Team

              Even though the Xiaomi users have got the unlimited streaming, they would eventually have to pay an amount for enjoying that music offline. The company offers a package called as Hungama Pro Package which will cost for Rs.899/year providing unlimited offline downloads as long as you've got storage left on your device. The company even hopes to increase its user base of about 7 Million Daily Active - Mi Music users with the new announcements. The users also have the option to ignore tracks which are under five mins or less, while you can even overlook the ones having less than 2MB size. It is beneficial to ignore those WhatsApp audios or your recorded call conversations.

Credits: Editorial Team

Mi Video: Updated Services.

Credits: Editorial Team

                Mi Video is a service as the name suggests, provides a stage for content consumption(videos). Now the company has introduced video streaming services as an extension to it's already announced local video services available offline which serves just like any other media player. The company has partnered with Hungama Play, Voot, SonyLiv, Sun NXT, TVF and even more to provide online streaming directly within the app. They currently offer about 5,00,000 hours of content which contains nearly 80% of the free content. The app now also supports MKA, MPEG and M2TS formats than the existing ones. It also supports subtitles available in multiple languages and private folders. Casting functionality is not only possible for Smart TV, but for the ones with DLNA and Miracast as well.


         On the launch, Manu Jain - Managing Director of Xiaomi India and VP of Xiaomi shared his thoughts,“Xiaomi’s core belief lies in providing high-quality products with the best specs, at an honest pricing. We are able to do this because of our business model — we provide our smartphones and other hardware at affordable pricing, aiming to monetize our MIUI Internet services in the long run. With the launch of these two apps Mi Music and Mi Video, we hope to serve millions of Xiaomi smartphone users with a better user experience through enhanced Internet services.” 

Credits: Editorial Team.

               Xiaomi even hints that they might bring more services as Mi Music and Mi Video are their first internet services that have been launched in India. In the coming few months, gamification will also be introduced in Mi Music. Mi Pop Play is an event hosted by Xiaomi to essentially bring out their fans across the country to enjoy with the executive personnel. So far this has been the 2nd Pop-up event held in India, and it accommodated about 200 Mi Fans along with the Media and VIPs.

     
 Source: Editorial Team