 "Stories pave the way forward for Saavn")
For nearly three years now, Saavn, a digital music company founded in the US by three Indian entrepreneurs has struck a low key with its brand building efforts. Even as competitors such as gaana.com (owned by Times Internet) played it loud with television and digital campaigns, Saavn's advertising was limited to a few outdoor hoardings and radio ads. But with the market getting into a crush as telecom operators bundle music streaming apps in attractive packages and tie up with established players in the business, Saavn is fine-tuning its brand story. After a recent round of funding where it raised $100 million from Tiger Global, it is exploring new audio formats in different languages and investing in a network of content operators to play more than just songs on its platform.
Early this month, it launched the first in its series of audio documentaries, a serialised narrative on the Arushi murder case. It has also launched story-telling shows with Neelesh Mishra, one of FM radio's well-known names. A couple of months back it launched a radio streaming service in association with Maruti Suzuki - these efforts, the company's founders hope, will push it on the road to profitability. Soon Indian language content (apart from Hindi) programmes will also play on its service.
Saavn says it has seen its business grow at a steady clip - its daily active users are up ten times while the number of people streaming live, three times, since 2014. But there are problems. Piracy and licensing bottlenecks plague the music streaming business in India said the FICCI-KPMG Media and Entertainment Industry Report, 2015 and with the onset of 4G, life for music streaming apps is set to get even more difficult as big brands with big bucks enter the market.
However, there is little doubt that the market has immense potential. India represents 2.9 per cent of the world's in-app revenue according to Best Media Info, Tune report and companies have barely scratched the tip of the iceberg.
As co-founder Paramdeep Singh, lays out his plans for Saavn, it sounds a lot like the American National Public Radio (NPR) model. Apart from docu-dramas, Saavn is developing shows for children, news-based programming as well as developing comedy, sports and mythology-led listening hours. NPR runs several popular shows that have an audience around the globe - the famous Planet Money for financial news and trends or Embedded, which tells personalised, news-led long-form stories. Recently NPR also aired Serial, an episodic investigative journalism programme.
While this is true, Singh says there is a difference between Saavn and NPR. "We won't be producing this content. Producing content is easy right now. Someone with a good smartphone can record a show," he adds. NPR has its own studios and hires its own talent, but Saavn won't be taking that route; a sign perhaps that the Indian market is still to grow big enough for companies decide to invest in their own content.
"When it comes to Indie artists, we license their music on our platform. We will use a similar model (for the stories)," Singh adds. But is there a market for the new form of content? "This format was never available on terrestrial radio in India. People just don't know about it. Once they do, you'll see traction," said Singh. In the past, government-owned Vividh Bharti did have serialised plays but their appeal today, would be limited to audiences of a certain vintage. Saavn hopes to reach out to the podcast-listening generation with contemporary narratives.
The sound of money
How will Saavn monetise its new content? As of now, the company is sticking to an advertisement-led revenue model. It plays a 15-second ad after every 15 minutes of music and a banner ad stays on for a few minutes after. "We have a 5 per cent average click-through rate and that's phenomenal in our business," said Singh.
The same may not go down too well for audio documentaries. Playing an ad every 15 minutes during a 45-minute episode may put off listeners. "Well, if people don't like the format, they can always get the paid pro version without the ads," Singh says. Saavn offers music downloads at Rs 100 under its 'pro' service while Gaana charges Rs 297 for three months of ad-free listening. But Singh admits that the advertising format is still up for debate. Currently, anchors read out an ad at the beginning and end of the podcasts. "We may try that too," Singh says.
Saavn currently has 18 million active users who have a library of 30 million tracks in 13 different languages. These are the users, Saavn, hopes will sample its original content as well. What Saavn thinks will truly make it work will be regional content. "It will be difficult to find talent in regional languages but we found it when we did music, we'll find it when we do programming," he says. Don't be surprised if Saavn takes to video soon as well. After all, it is an abbreviation for South Asian Audio and Visual Network.
