Wynk Music & Hindi Music — To Stream and to Buy

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.

TL;DR: If you use a PC for listening to music, trust me, walk away. On phones it’s an even call between Gaana, Saavn and Wynk.

Wynk Music is a free music download app for every mood!

Perhaps the one thing that stands out the most in favor of Wynk over Gaana and Saavn is that you can buy songs on Wynk. A song costs you anywhere from ₹5-15. An album can be cheaper at ₹90–120.

Side bar: Shouldn’t they sell playlists at a discount?

This can be their USP, however, it’s a little old school considering that most people would just stream their music rather than pay per song/album. That and the fact that Airtel is India’s strongest mobile carrier and Wynk Music is free for all Airtel users.

I know that not everyone has access to high speed internet but answer me this, would someone who doesn’t have access to high speed internet have enough money to buy songs on Wynk? Maybe, maybe not.

Okay, so this is going to be a small rivalry between the Indian Music Streaming Apps. It’s obvious, west facing players cannot be expected to be toe-to-toe with the India facing players.

Also, (because I can’t get myself to not talk about it) some design choices on the UI by Wynk are too radical it seems. Considering in mind that they are pursuing the Indian market, I am not sure if that’s too good a move. I’ll research more and report back to you.

I am trying hard to not rant about how did they manage to create such a brilliant app and a pathetic website. Can I help?

While I could find articles calling out Wynk as the ‘#1 Music Streaming app in India’, I could find little proof of the same. With Saavn clocking the same userbase and Gaana exceeding their combined userbase, I would put Wynk at #3.

Alright, enough of what Wynk is and isn’t. Let’s play some music.

So, you know by now, I hope, how I do this.

I’ll listen to Hindi music from every era, every music label, from most popular to the least known tracks and report back what I feel about the catalogue in general.

Here goes:

1. The 100 song (per month) free limit seems like a stretch I had to limit my interaction with the app for this reason.
2. Did I mention that web interface is near unusable?
3. Indie music is mostly a miss. What you can find is a bonus.
4. Popular artists like Dualist Inquiry & Nucleya are only semi-present on Wynk.
5. Maati baani is absent, so is Swarathma, with just one random track available.
6. Artists are neatly arranged.
7. Bollywood music is present, thankfully, the new music too.
8. Every era and every label is present.
9. Playlists are okay at best. They are very obvious and lack depth.
10. Radios do well, I couldn’t find anything odd there.

Alright then, Barring Airtel users, test the waters before you pay a subscription.

This is the fourth post in this series. Find the list here. Please share your feedback (Hopefully constructive) with me. Engage with me on my Twitter. Find me on LinkedIn.

A half-decent offering from the Airtel group.

Signing off!