Indian Music-Sharing Site Saavn Rises Meteorically, Thanks to Facebook

By Tech Wire Asia | 20 February, 2012

Remember the Facebook Timeline open graph introduced in January? There were three Indian apps as part of that massive launch: IBN Live, IN Hindi and Saavn. Now Saavn has come out with its numbers, and they are explosive, to say the least. Facebook and Saav seems to be a true win-win situation.

India is the second biggest user base for Facebook worldwide, and Saavn doesn’t have any better platform than Facebook to reach millions of users. With a potential of reaching 44 million Indian users, Saavn now reaches 1.3 million users. It has added 700,000 new users in a month, after the Facebook Timeline Open Graph integration.

Saavn which stands for South Asian Video Network, has licensed over 200 content providers spanning 219 countries, and has over 1 million music tracks. Bollywood content is predominant, but Saavn has regional music (Tamil and Punjabi) and devotional songs, too. Saavn plans to earn its revenue through display advertising.

Regional music is a big growth market for Saavn. It currently has Tamil and Punjabi but adding other languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalayam and other languages will push Saavn even further up the usage curve.

Saavn doesn’t appear as a separate link when you open Facebook, though. It is listed under Music. That is if you have subscribed to more than one music service like Saavn, Gaana.com, and Myspace.

Listening to music isn’t the same as reading news on Facebook. Once a song or a playlist is selected, the actual song gets played back on the originating site like Saavn or Gaana.com. What you can do while on the main Facebook site is selecti the song or a playlist, save it and share it. The same can be done by going and registering with Saavn. The beauty of this integration is that you don’t have to register for Saavn separately, assuming you are already logged in to Facebook.

With increased broadband and mobile Internet speeds, and the continuous crackdown on popular illegal file sharing sites like Songs.pk, Facebook and Saavn are sitting on a potential gold mine.

Via