How Gaana.com Became India's Top Music Streaming Service

📖 Learning

Manav Makhija

Jul 6, 2021 — 6 min read

Online music streaming in India has been flourishing rapidly for the past three to four years. People in our country have always been fond of music be it the classical Indian genres or the new pop-hits of Bollywood or Hollywood. The internet today is being served at very nominal prices; the lucrative online music industry is going at its peak. Everybody wants to stream music online as it’s easy to listen anytime, anywhere, and according to ones one wish and taste of music.

According to the reports given by Statista, the online music streaming industry in India contributes more than 213 million dollars and more than 90 million users and this rate is rapidly increasing at 1.6 percent per annum. With the increasing subscribers and users of top music streaming platforms, there is one app that has taken over all others in the Indian music streaming market which is Gaana. In this article you will know more about how Gaana became India’s top audio streaming music service, defeating all others.

Gaana.com - Latest News

June 26, 2021 - Gaana raises $40 million in a fresh debt investment round from its existing investor, Tencent and is likely to raise more soon.

September 3, 2020 - Tencent and Times Internet helped Gaana raise around Rs 375 crore in a debt funding round, which was the first investment in two years since their last funding round led by Tencent.

February 25, 2020 - Gaana leads the other Indian music streaming apps with a 30% market share in January, as per the OTT Audience Measurement Insights report.

History of Gaana.com

Since 2010, Gaana.com was lead by Avinash Mudaliar as he was one of the founding members of this platform. He left the organization and Pawan Agrawal became the new business head in the year 2013. It is only then when the company released its mobile app for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and other devices. In the same year, Gaana.com came into partnership with the South Indian Music Companies Association which gave them the rights and access to 79 different labels of music.

After Micromax acquired a stake at Gaana.com in the year 2016, Prashan Agrawal became the CEO. The IIT Kanpur and ISB MBA graduate transformed the platform completely after which the company saw huge success. He brought a revolution to India’s digital music platform and grew his company’s market up to seven times its size.

Gaana and music streaming industry revolution

The music streaming industry saw a huge growth after the launch of 4G in India and the past two years it has grown seven times as Indians preferred consuming music online. Since the first time users of mobile internet have coupled with easy easily availability of technology even in the rural parts of India, the industry has seen a huge success. Such factors helped Gaana to reach every part of our country and their user base started multiplying rapidly. When Gaana. started gaining popularity under the leadership of Prashan, the company didn’t stop growing.

Today Gaana offers music in more than twenty-one languages and has a base of more than 3.3 billion songs from all genres. In December 2019, Gaana claimed to have more than 125 million monthly active users which jumped to more than 185 million monthly active users in August 2020. The streaming platform is leading in the Indian music streaming industry and in terms of consumer preference. Even though a huge global competition like Spotify entered India last year, the customer choice in the segment remained Gaana.

According to the company, 35% of the total contribution is from regional music. The platform also has more than 5000 users generated podcasts per month in many languages and genres. Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and lockdowns imposed in the country, the company has seen a 13% surge in the consumer consumption of music and podcasts. Though the app reported a rise in the overall usage of their app, Gaana failed to grow to its full potential. The company showed a mere 2.65% rise in its operating revenue, which reached Rs 123 crore at the end of this fiscal year compared to Rs 120 crore revenue reported at the end of FY20.

The use of Artificial Intelligence

Gaana has also been a piece of the leading music streaming industry in terms of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and driving innovation with Machine Learning Space. The platform has various unique AI-based algorithms that help its users to offer song recommendations based on their music listening patterns. Gaana has also witnessed success because of its voice assistant search that has been very popular among the millennials as well as elderly as many people find it hard to type.

Unique Features of Gaana

The innovative services offered by the platform have to lead to massive success. There are a few unique features of the platform that helps the company stands out in the industry:

• Gaana was the first music application in India that introduced 24 x 7 online entertainment content feed

• The AI-led personalized recommendations help the users in giving utmost satisfaction from the platform

• Gaana also offers features like play along with lyrics, vertical videos, and multilingual voice assistant search

• The Smart downloads feature enables the premium users to automatically download songs based on their listening history.

• After acquiring Jukebox studios, Gaana is now accessible to more than 5000 offline locations such as pubs and bars

• Gaana offers various other products apart from music which includes podcasts, hotshots, radio, etc.

Launch of HotShots after the ban of ‘Tiktok’

Soon after the Indian government took the decision to ban the use of many Chinese apps in India including TikTok which was a social media sensation, Gaana launched HotShots which was a similar tool. The intuitive and intriguing feature in Gaana helped its users to create and share short videos and stories just like the popular Instagram Reels. Many renowned influencers like Neha Kakkar, Darshan Raval, Jannat Zubair, Baba Jackson, and many others joined the Gaana HotShots platform to created and share exclusive content in various categories and industries like comedy, music, lip-sync and dance.

Furthermore, the company and its team believe that the operations of the company are soon going to help them in earning good profits. Gaana aims to provide content that is convenient and enjoyable for every Indian. An average user who uses Gaana App spends about 30 minutes in a single go on an average basis. Today the company’s 80% users are loyal to them who have provided them with the feedback that they love the platform for its songs, podcasts, short videos, and HotShots.

The company wants to reach 250 million followers in the next year after it has successfully attained its targeted reach of 185 million monthly active users in August 2020. The leading music streaming application has already raised funds worth $206.2 million from its 3 investors, Tencent and Micromax Informatics being the primary ones. The latest funding round was a debt round led by Tencent that pumped in $40 million into the Indian music streaming giant on June 2021, post which the company claims to be valued at $570 million.

Gaana promises its customers that the platform will continue to give the best possible experience to its customers, launch new features timely, keep expanding its music library, and keep improving its intuitive music recommendations.