Gaana might be a music streaming app, but that doesn’t mean it can’t offer its music content in video format. Looking at its growth in the Indian market, with over 100 million monthly active users (MAUs), mostly on mobile, the platform will now support vertical-only, mobile-centric video content as well.
It’s called Gaana Videos, and Gaana has said on Wednesday that all of the video content will be exclusive to its platform. With Deloitte estimating that India has more than 150 million music streamers, Gaana’s feat of 100 million puts it in a leadership position.
Having said that, it can be argued that most of Gaana’s users aren’t paying to use its service, which is mostly the case with Indian consumers in general.
Gaana Videos thankfully is not a separate app and you can access the videos within the regular Gaana app itself. You’ll see Videos written with an icon at the top right of the screen, next to search and settings.
Click on that and you’ll be able to browse through the content which is available right now. The videos are in vertical format, and tailor-made for viewing on mobile only.
Your choices of video will curate a recommended list but as of now, the content seems to be confined to Punjabi music (probably location specific), with titles like Lamberghini showing up in the list.
Ideally videos would put Gaana as a direct competition to YouTube Premium (or even Music), but the content spread isn’t comparable. Gaana’s reliance on exclusive content from top Indian artists might not serve everyone’s appetite.
With competition increasing in the music streaming space, value-added features will enable brands like Gaana to differentiate themselves from others like Spotify, JioSaavn and Amazon Prime Music.
In terms of its usage, Gaana highlighted that more than 35 percent of its listeners are from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Its users are also adopting voice assistant to search for content on the app.
Gaana has relied heavily on its free and cost-effective paid models and it’s fair to say that the competition has been keeping a close eye on what and how it does. After all, Spotify didn’t think of letting users in India access its content for free (with ads) from day one, just because it wanted to.
It has never been a good time to avail the services of music streaming apps in India, all because of drastic drop in data prices.
The market is set for a massive explosion in the coming years, and like Spotify and YouTube Music, existing local players like Gaana would want to keep themselves modern and relevant without caving under the pressure of its global counterparts.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)