South Asian Audio Visual Network (Saavn), the digital distributor of bollywood, devotional and regional music with rights over two million tracks in 77 languages offers music globally on the web, iOS and android.

In 2010, Saavn.com was re-launched with an improved user interface and smarter search capabilities. This new website and its corollary mobile apps continue to be the company’s signature products today. The music app has now further integrated by tying up with Facebook timeline.

In a conversation with Radioandmusic.com’s Chandni Mathur, Saavn co-founder and MD Paramdeep Singh reveals the success of the newly launched app in the market, its marketing campaigns and other initiatives to be rolled out soon.

Excerpts:

Give us a brief about Saavn?

Saavn is the fastest-growing service for South Asian music in India and worldwide. With licensed content from hundreds of music labels, Saavn delivers a wide repertoire of bollywood tracks to millions of mobile users each month with app Saavn Music for Android and iPhone, and its flagship website Saavn.com.

You have recently collaborated with Facebook for its timeline app. Tell us about it?

We were obviously very excited when Facebook selected us as their first global Open Graph partner. This means that Saavn now has a deep integration with Facebook’s Music app allowing fans to stream any of Saavn’s two million plus tracks using their logins, and when you listen to music on Saavn via Facebook, you and your friends can share and discover new music from the Facebook Timeline, Ticker, and News Feed. In the first three days of launch, Open Graph doubled the total amount of visitors to Saavn.com and increased the number of visitors from Facebook to Saavn by 15 times.

When was the launch? How many downloads have been done till now?

We launched as a Facebook music partner in December 2011 and immediately saw incredible growth in traffic and downloads; our monthly active users on Facebook increased from 35,000 to 785,000 in the first 30 days. These users have generated over 750 million Facebook story impressions since the launch. Currently Saavn has 1.3 million users across 219 countries including India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey and even the US. Now, nearly half of Saavn’s new registered users use Facebook Connect.

Is Saavn Music a free subscription app?

Yes, Saavn Music is free on the iPhone and android and comes without a subscription. It has been downloaded over 1,000,000 times for android and over 500,000 times for iPhone. The app also comes pre-installed in many handsets in India.

How successful has the music app been in the Smartphone market?

Saavn Music is ranked number 51 in popularity in the world, and it’s the only desi app in the top 100 as well. Also, of all the free music apps in the iTunes store, Saavn is ranked number 49 in popularity.

How are you monetizing revenues from the app?

We are helping Facebook build local relevance in India through Indian music. Saavn generates revenues through targeted display and media ad units for global advertisers. Our music streaming is ad-supported with a combination of display (sold directly) and network ads.

What is the USP of this music app that makes it different from the crowd?

The design of the app separates it from the other music apps available in the market today. You won’t find another app that works this well, and so intuitively. We’re passionate music listeners ourselves, and that really informed the look and feel of Saavn. The app also offers a better user experience anywhere. Our philosophy is that our job is never done. Saavn’s products evolve constantly to fit the needs of our listeners.

How do you monitor the market with so many illegal download sites offering music?

Simply put, we don’t feel the need for it. We think Saavn speaks for itself; the user experience is so good that people do not feel the need to stream music from elsewhere. Yes you could get illegal music elsewhere, but why would you want to? It’s up to us to reduce the reasons why anyone would want illegal content, and that’s what we take most seriously.

Which other initiatives and services are planned for this year?

We will be undertaking lots of initiatives to expand the reach of Saavn this year. We are planning to launch an app for Blackberry users and in addition to it, we will also bulk our Tamil content along with new regional languages to our content offering.