Saavn — English Music Catalogue
Disclaimer: This and the articles that follow are an attempt at understanding the music tech industry from a Product perspective. We do not claim to be experts in the field. All we claim is to be students of music tech. We hope this series will help others understand music tech and hopefully appreciate the industry.
Reviewing Saavn was super exciting as well as nerve wrecking for me. Primarily because this was the first Indian company that I was reviewing and even though I didn’t have high expectations from it, I was still hoping that it would be good. I have not even given Saavn a chance since it came out.
On entering the page, I noticed that all music I saw was Hindi. I thought I was gonna be in trouble when I started searching for music. Then I noticed a language filter, and on selection English, everything just refreshed with music that I was looking for.
Saavn surprised me with their catalogue. I honestly didn’t expect them to have everything I was looking for. I search for old music and new music, I searched for Gospel music and Progressive metal and found everything. I was super impressed. When it came to finding Indian bands, I found quite a few bands but there were some which have music up on other platforms but I couldn’t find on Saavn.
Saavn also have a radio which actually worked pretty well. I did get music that I liked that was pretty close to the mood/song/artist that I chose. I love how they show the top 15 weekly on the side. To me, that is super important and probably one thing that stands out with Saavn.
I also see them very obviously pushing Indian artists over the others even though I have english selected which was nice to see as an Indian, but as a product, I think its a questionable choice.
So here was/is my biggest problem with Saavn. I had a horrible experience and will probably never use Saavn because of it. On listening to music on the website, I noticed a lot of tiny glitch noises coming out of the song. I was first listening to Ed Sheeran’s new album, Divide. I thought okay, its probably just the album. Then I shifted to Karnivool’s Cote and it was still there. That was definitely a deal breaker for me. I cant listen to a song with around 30 glitches in between. It killed my experience. I tried this on a windows laptop of a friend and everything worked fine. I’m currently using a Macbook air and using Google Chrome. So Saavn, if you’re reading, this is priority number 1 IMO. You cannot be a music platform that streams glitchy music.
Overall, I was super impressed with Saavn’s design, playlist, recommendations and radio.
Did I have a deal breaker? Yes, glitchy audio.
Note: This is the sixth article among a series of articles that I will be writing related to the music tech industry under a publication called “Uncovering Music Tech”. Do let me know what you think. You can get in touch with me via LinkedIn Here, Instagram Here and my Twitter Here.
