Which Music Streaming App should you use (India edition)? — English Music

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.

Phew! After going through all these apps available it makes me think of all the difficulties that all these guys have to go through to onboard artists. I’m sure different labels have their own requirements and their own price.

Was there one clear winner for me? Yes.

And the winner is…… drum roll Google Play Music.

The main reason being that anything not available on Google Play Music automatically takes me to YouTube as a backup. So there’s a good choice I will always find what I’m looking for. Personally, YouTube videos stream without buffer time for me, so that isn’t something I’m worried about. The fact that they will always have what I’m looking for is amazing.

I was perplexed as to how to categorize the remaining apps. So I decided to split them into “Amazing” “Average” and “Really need to improve”. I know what you’re thinking, really need to improve is a pretty harsh category. But my alternate option was fucking horrible, so I guess really need to improve sounds nicer.

Amazing

There were two other apps besides Google Play Music that I could put into this category I.e Spotify and Apple Music.

Spotify and Apple Music both had almost all the music I wanted. Spotify had a few indian artists that I couldn’t find on Apple Music, but besides that, I could find almost everything on both platforms.

Average

This category has three players I.e. SoundCloud, Saavn and Pandora. SoundCloud was a bit difficult to categorize as their target of cataloguing is very different as compared to the other apps we are reviewing. But I would still categorize them as average as they don’t seem to be doing the greatest job of getting smaller artists on the platform. Pandora falls into this category as primarily because I didn’t find a single Indian artist in their catalogue which was very disappointing for me. They also did not have a few not so famous global artists. Being a platform as big and old as Pandora, you’d think they would have a bigger catalogue or at least in par with the big boys. I’m guessing their finger would point to the Music Genome Project for the delay in adding music, but it cannot be an excuse. Saavn was my biggest surprise from all the apps I reviewed. I expected them to be as bad as Gaana and Wynk, they were very clearly superior to them and they were in it to give the big dogs a run for their money. To back their clean design was a big fat library of music. They probably have almost all the music I searched for with a few exceptions. They probably had the best Indian English music catalogue.

Really need to improve

Gaana and Wynk were the winners of this category. If Gaana and Wynk are serious about continuing in this industry, their cataloguing needs to improve immensely. These guys were both lacking on the English Global and Indian music. I’m not sure why these apps are struggling with the catalogue as music they are, but I’m sure they have a reason for it. I’m sure that they have a lot of factors either financially, legally or operations wise holding them back, but if they are serious about surviving, they need to up their game and do it soon!

Note: This is the ninth 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.