Music uninterrupted

Sukanya Agrawal

With a smartphone in hand and internet waves all over the place, it has never been so easy to listen to music. We are now in the 17th year of this century and have already moved on from using old cassettes and reached a point where they can be passed off as vintage collectibles. It was only a matter of time that technology entered, touched and conquered the beautiful world of music. For the longest time, we were required to purchase music in the form of tapes or cassettes. Since nobody knew any better, nobody minded. However, that was until we were introduced to the internet. The idea that downloading music free of cost is illegal got pushed aside and stored away in some corner of our minds, if it was even there in the first place. How then, after years and years of piracy, has the market evolved to introduce us to platforms that actually convince us to turn towards paid music downloads?

Home grown

The process started with locally envisioned start-ups like Gaana, Hungama and later joined by the America-based Saavn. Now, we have more companies testing the waters or simply diving in like in the case of telecommunication jumbo, Airtel. It was only once these services were in place that international giants like Apple Music dared to enter the Indian market. They brought along Australia’s Guvera and have Sweden’s Spotify wondering. However, the Indian market remains strikingly different from that of, say, the United States. The most notable is the gap in the pricing of the music. The main reason for such an unevenness is not only a difference in the spendable income of an average Indian, but it also takes into account the willingness of an Indian to actually spend on purchasing music. Before starting a service, the company would look for valid customers. In this case there were very little, if any. Thanks to the countless years of convenient illegal downloads, the pubic needed to be reminded that this is an art form just like any other, and needs to be rewarded.

Creating your own playlist, finding a song from every corner of the country, listening to whole albums or whole discographies of an artist was not easy when scouting through different illegal websites. These tasks and several others can be done in just one app and that is the main attraction. By simplifying the streaming process, the Indian music apps have made up for what they took away from the audiences, that is, the ability to listen to music free of cost. In fact, the free trial packs that these apps offer go a long way in getting them loyal customers. Apple Music offers the longest trial period of three months followed by a very economic monthly plan.

Pay to listen

Over the last few years, India has rapidly developed a huge market for music. We have several streaming apps with an all-you-can-listen buffet, some imported while some indigenous. We have content being presented to us from all over the world. Unfortunately, to make this possible whilst providing an interesting user interface which simplifies the process of playing music, and taking steps towards curbing piracy, these companies are losing everything.

Even with several active users whose numbers run into millions, they hardly manage to break even. Since most of us are still not on board with the idea of paying money for “just a song”, they have to keep the option of free streaming open and always available, sometimes at a great cost. They usually turn to advertisements and in-app purchases for some profits. For their more generous users, they also have the options of some very keenly priced services like unlimited downloads and no interruptions by ads. Moreover, now that they are well-settled in the market, they are looking for other streams of revenue and exploring the field of video content and podcasts which would also fetch them higher advertising rates.

All for the better

Streaming now takes up a huge chunk of the music listening experience, signifying a shift from the traditional TV and radio, and more significantly enabling the blurring of physical boundaries. As apps like Saavn started showcasing regional music on their homepage, the audiences have become more and more interested in the regional music, in addition to the pre-dominant Bollywood music or the latest in Western music.

Additionally, platforms like Saavn and Apple Music are slowly removing the middleman and the label, making it far more convenient for an independent artist to put out original content and reach a bigger audience. En fait, Saavn has an Artist Originals initiative wherein they take care of everything from the inception to the distribution of an artist’s music. Raja Baja, the massively successful sophomore album by electronic artist Nucleya was released exclusively on Saavn and earned him a huge fan following. That is a big step for a market where it has been a game of luck by chance for a musician, who forms the crux of the industry, to make it big and famous.

Well, this owes itself to the fact that after over a decade of surviving on pirated content, the country now has legitimate platforms that provide a user-friendly and technologically advanced music streaming service, and we are all for making the best of it.