MUMBAI: Online music streaming service Gaana is amongst many players aiming to enhance its catalogue and explore new opportunities in the ever growing digital music market.

Acquiring more music and expanding catalogue seems to be the success mantra followed by Gaana, as they focus on getting in more music from markets like Bengal in the near future. While consumption is growing on the digital platform with the company having around four million unique visitors, the surging tract on mobile consumption is also another territory to acquire.

“We will continue to acquire more music as we aspire to become the number one player on mobile and digital. We witnessed 400,000 downloads of the mobile app in the first three weeks, and also want to increase our consumers on digital by three fold. The traffic on the site has increased but the user experience is our main focus. Building a better product experience for the user is key ”

The digital music market has significantly grown in the last two years with newer players coming in and enhancing the growth of industry. Even though the competition does increase at a certain level, most players claim that it is very healthy and helps each other to build more unique products for the consumers.

As reported earlier by Radioandmusic.com, earning revenues in the digital market may sometimes be difficult as the cost of investment is more than the returns being attained in the long run. In order to balance the same, a paid ecosystem is what industry players state, might help the companies sustain and grow in the future.

Talking about revenues, Mudaliar commented, “A paid ecosystem does make sense and I think we are getting there. Currently we offer only free streaming but maybe in the future we might explore the option as well. We follow an innovation based revenue model which will scale up in the future. Gaana also has ad based campaigns but the strength is sponsorship as they get us extended revenues.”

The revenues earned by the company in the first year were substantial, but it is now looking to multiply by two- three times by exploring more revenue streams and increase penetration.

With an aim to further its reach across the globe, the company has acquired Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam content from over 90 labels in SIMCA’s stable. The association enables Gaana to access around 60,000 songs from labels including Star Audio, Satyam Audio, Aditya Music, Shruthilaya Music, Melody Music, Amudham Music, 5 Star Audio, Millenium Audio and Symphony Recording Company amongst others. The music service will offer some of the best classics of artistes like Illayaraja, SP Balasubramanyam, KJ Yesudas, Chitra and MS Subbulakshmi to new film songs.

Mudaliar said, “We have noticed that most consumed music amongst our audience is the regional catalogue. South Indian music also has a lot of tract overseas as most immigrants belong to the southern states. Offering regional music to our consumers was very important to us, as 28-29 per cent of music consumed is regional.”

While bollywood music continues to dominate a larger share of the music consuming market, a holistic provision of the bollywood and regional catalogue may increase the level of stickiness on the site. Currently, Gaana.com boasts of a stickiness rate of 27 minutes and further aims to increase it to 30 minutes and more.