MUMBAI: Gaana.com has been on the forefront when it comes to supporting Indie music for a long time now. The brand attained 100 mn users recently, capturing 66 percent of total music users in India.

“Our biggest advantage has been our name that resonated with the customer, with the jingle being the huge brand involve. We thank the customers for choosing us. We are doing everything possible to make sure that we understand the Indian consumer and provide him/her the western class experience also,” said Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal.

Gaana has tough competitors like Spotify, YouTube Music that have made its way to India in 2019.

On asking Gaana CEO about the competitive market scenario, he says, “The e-commerce market had bloomed back in 2014. The market itself had developed because competitors were spending so much to educate the customer (that there is no fraud online,) the same education needs to happen. If you look at India’s population, all of the 125 cr people listen to music. The beauty of the country is that everyone knows songs, listens to them, but only 15 cr people, today, listen to music online. I think more investment is needed to educate these 125 cr people to start listening to music online. From that perspective, it’s a welcome move that Spotify, YouTube is here because we need to make more investments to educate the customer.”

About the current music industry, Agarwal finds Bollywood to be cluttered with remixes. He comments on the same, “At least for the past twelve to eighteen months, I think 50 percent of Bollywood songs were remixes. This kills entire music creativity and original compositions. The biggest story of non-film music has to be a creation of new artists, new artist covers and give them a platform of distribution of the scale that Gaana has.”

Regional and English music has played a much bigger role in terms of consumption for Gaana addresses Agarwal.

He further adds, “From the content perspective, the tilt of demography, in our country, happens to come on Gaana. The younger generation needs to be built, therefore, lyrics need to change. Also, you need to add EDM music, which is much needed. The biggest difference is the emergence of digital music products. English and regional has grown in multi folds. We have consistently put in a lot of effort to grow original music, which is Punjabi, Haryanvi and English music and today, it contributes to 50 percent music consumption on our platform compared to regional and English and as we grow from here.”

Lastly on being quizzed about what has Gaana envisioned, Agarwal informs, "The company wants to reach a 200 mn customer base in two years.”