MUMBAI: After launching its application on iOS and BlackBerry devices, online music streaming service Gaana has now unveiled its music streaming app on Windows 7 and 8 phones with unique features. With its presence across all major mobile platforms, the service is now aiming to expand its product portfolio to tablets in the near future.
The Gaana app is currently available on iOS, Android, Blackberry, J2ME and Windows devices, with a Windows 8 application for tablets. With tablets too emerging as a popular platform in the country, Gaana aims to get an early advantage from its competitors to be available on the platform as well.
Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, Gaana.com head Avinash Mudaliar said, “Gaana has had a Windows 8 application for tablets for a while now, so our teams were familiar with the UI principles and any challenges we faced were fixed very quickly. Our aim now is to make Gaana available for users of all platforms and devices. We will also be working towards developing applications for tablets which is a very popular platform in India.”
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The move is a part of Gaana’s strategy to gain early leadership in the space amongst most of its competitors. While Saavn is working towards launching its paid subscription models and developing mobile apps across platforms, another leading service Dhingana is amongst the only players to have also launched its app across the mobile web platform.
“Developers and other services will gladly embrace the platform and it is only a matter of time before our competitors are present on it. Till then, we intend to make the most of it and help connect with all our users on Windows mobile,” he added.
The newly launched Windows app has various features that enable it to work for both Windows Phone 7 and 8 devices, along with an optimized code of the application bringing its size to fewer than 2MB. It also offers a different user interface in line with the Modern UI design philosophy. Users have access to Gaana’s catalogue of over one million songs in various languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi and more.
Apart from that, the app also comprises of features where users can make or hear the favourite playlists and sync them across the web and phone, smart recommendations to listen to similar songs or albums, social listening to easily share their favourites with friends on Facebook, Twitter and email and a radio mode which allows users to create their own radio station based on the songs they play.
Commenting on the app, Mudaliar said, “The application has been successful with our Windows Phone users and the response we have seen so far has been encouraging. We have made sure that the Windows Phone application has all the features that we have on other platforms. Our priority was to give the users a stable product.”
Aiming to move ahead in the space through various initiatives, the service has also unveiled plans to launch a premium service Gaana+ that brings offline listening in addition to other features, which will give users more functionality.
“We will be focusing on rolling out more features for all versions of the app. There will also be significant enhancements made on our website. We have a few things currently on our radar which includes increasing users on web and mobile platforms and also enhancing the user experience with features such as customized radio stations and more,” he expressed.
