Gaana claims 100 million MAUs, launches video and artists focused products

Music streaming platform Gaana.com had claimed the top spot in Indian music streaming space a couple of weeks ago. The title was given to it by CyberMedia Research on the basis of a survey it had conducted. As per its findings, Ganna was preferred by 25% of the people using these apps.

Today, in a press conference Prashan Agarwal, CEO of the company has announced the achievement of its 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) target. The downloads have reached over 125 million.

During announcing the milestone, Gaana unveiled two of its new products - Gaana Video and Artist Dashboard.

Gaana Video is a platform's exclusive vertical video format only for mobile usage and is created with exclusive partnerships with Indian artists. The videos are specially curated where users can see artists performing and get a more engaging experience for them.

Artist Dashboard, on the other hand, is a self-service dashboard for artists where they can access insights and analytics around the consumption of their musical content by Gaana users, the demographic (region, age, gender) of followers, performance patterns, etc.

For artists' growth, the company also has a product called Gaana exclusives and originals that launch independent artists and their music under its own label. Last Gaana Original Season 2 album recorded 200 million plus playouts, claims the company. Manmeet from Meet Bros specifically pointed out the app's contribution towards artists' growth during the conference.

As the company explained during its last press statement, this growth is led by Gaana's industry-first products in the country like 'For You' screen that offers recommendations and is used by over 10% platform users.

Other differentiators that Gaana counts on is the Gaana voice assistant easing out the process of multilingual search, a feature used by over 28% users, a figure expected to grow up to 50% by 2020. Gaana has also invested in AI algorithms for the recommendation feature that drives 17% consumption. With voice assistant and AI, Gaana wants to build a platform where discovery will take a backseat and recommendation will run the platform.

Gaana is one of the first music streaming apps in the country certainly has enjoyed an advantage over other players. However, with the Internet revolution brought by Jio and the telecom's integration with Saavn, the competition between the two became more intense.

Now, one of the world's top music streaming platforms Spotify has come to India and $76 billion valued Bytedance is also working on a new such app, a company that counts India as one of its key markets.

This is bound to bring tough competition to Gaana's journey going ahead.

To compete with Spotify, Gaana has 6 years of collated data, which the Swedish app will take 2 years to acquire. And Bytedance, Agarwal points out, is better at engaging users instead of recommending them music. The Chinese app too will take significant time to tackle Indian diversity and by that time Gaana will have penetrated the market.

Further, he points out that the base that Gaana creates will stay the same, as unlike e-commerce apps, music streaming users have no reasons to switch applications from time to time. A loyal user base is key here.

On the same competition front, the firm claims a 1.4X times total data streaming compared to the next closest competitor. The leading music genre in this sense is Punjabi with a 3.8x streaming score, 3.4X in Tamil, 3.3X in Telugu, 2.4X in English and 1.7X in Bhojpuri.

In the last 3 years, Gaana claims 10X growth overall and a greater 25X growth in regional music consumption.

As far as tier II and III is concerned, Gaana seems to enjoy a greater advantage on the opportunity as AI driven Spotify is yet to penetrate deep into the country's native music culture.

Gaana, already working on these avenues can execute this penetration earlier than other apps with JioSaavn as an only significant competitor in that market.

In this regard, the company claims that 15% of users come from Maharashtra, 12% Uttar Pradesh, and 10% from Delhi. The growth is highest in tier II cities with 96% usage spike. In tier I and III this growth is 84% and 78% respectively. Maintaining the tier II growth and improving on the other demographics shall be the next step for the company.

In the future, Agarwal said the aim is to maintain the top position with the new products and further innovation on the platform in all aspects.

Also, it has started offering its services in B2B segment as well in form of Gaana Jukebox studio, a platform that can be used in gyms, malls and other public places. This can be counted as an important step towards creating a widespread presence and increasing revenue opportunities to tackle competition

The company aims to reach a 10 zeroes user figure in next 3-4 years. The next milestone towards that goal is 500 million users in the next 2 years.