Music streaming services in India like Gaana and Saavn will have to be prepared as the competition might get tougher with the entry of international service Rdio. But at the same time, it will push existing players to innovate and get better. Gaana.com business head Pawan Agarwal, apart from agreeing with the positive side of competition, also believes that piracy is currently the biggest competitor for all music streaming services.
In a conversation with Radioandmusic’s Jescilia Karayamparambil, Agarwal stressed that music streaming is the future and that in a couple of years it will have a growth story to tell.
How much per cent growth did you witness last year in terms of traffic and revenue?
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The growth had been tremendous in mobile since we launched in January last year. We are over five million downloads across various platforms. We have 7.5 million active users on monthly basis including web users.
Web traffic has grown and consumption has almost doubled in the last year. There is lot of consumer validation in terms of digital consumption of music in a year’s time. Last year, we were not focussed on revenue, instead focused on growing in terms of audience and coming up with an engaging product. We have achieved that goal.
Revenue will be something that we will focus this year.
Why did you decide to acquire Musicfellas?
Gaana is totally committed to bringing all sorts of music to varying type of consumers. Indie music is a very important space for us and we wanted to strengthen our position as a music service that has Indie music. Musicfellas were totally aligned for this. The idea was to bring in more Indie music to our consumers and work closely with Indie music artistes. Digital has the power of bringing and distributing Independent artistes to a wider audience, which has not existed in the physical world. Musicfellas had a great platform and a good team, and have a great relationship with 700 artistes.
How did the new website help you? Did it help increase traffic?
Right now, the traffic we get is all organic. We do not spend to acquire the traffic. The new website was to take the Gaana experience to another level, world class level and we achieved it. Obviously, it did improve our organic traffic. We have 50 per cent repeat ever month. Last month, we had 60 per cent repeat. In general, we are number one according to Comscore. All of that is organic and direct growth.
The sudden shutdown of Dhingana and than its acquisition by Rdio, how do you look at both these facts?
Dhingana shutdown and other shutdowns was definitely unfortunate news. However, whether it is Dhingana or international players like Rdio or Saavn for that matter, all of us put together have one major battle to fight and that is against piracy. The competition will get tougher with international players entering the market. Also, there is an old saying that competition breeds innovation. So everyone will innovate, which means everyone will benefit from a viable and sustainable business model. The biggest encouragement is that the consumption and engaging matrix are pointing in the right direction. The only thing that needs to pick up is the willingness to pay. But that would also soon pick up, once the consumer is used to the digital pattern of consumption.
Many reports stated that music streaming is a growing business around the globe. How do you think the subscription model is picking up in India?
Our hypothesis is that consumers will not pay for content but they will start paying for consuming. If we build an experience that is better than the pirated version, then consumers will start paying for what would be curated content, discovery of content, access of content and so on. We are trying to build the value and we are hoping that it will take place in a few of years. If you look at the monetisation side or supply side of it for the music industry the biggest revenue channel has to be digital streaming since other channels like VAS and physical have declined, despite being major revenue generators.
How has the response been among clients?
We have seen good growth in mobile advertising which is very encouraging. We are innovating in terms of audio and display- hybrid advertising. It is picking up. Then there are contests which is a one-to-one interaction for the brands. Innovation will see more growth in coming years.
Talking about your live properties will ‘Gaana Awards’ be an offline or on-ground activity?
It is a small effort from Gaana to acknowledge and appreciate the great music that comes out. It is not based on critics or jury who decide but based on millions of consumers who are deciding it in a period of a year.
This year it will not be an on-ground event but in the coming years, we are open to that format. It depends on the responses this award function generates with the eco-system and advertisers.
What is your expectation for this year?
The goal this year will be to clean sweep the market and get to a position where we are the only service that comes to consumers’ minds. That is the goal that we have taken on ourselves. We want Gaana on every smartphone in our country. The goal is limited to validating the business model in some way, wherein we want to see some monetisation picking up.
