Within months of launching in the US, Spotify and Facebook unveiled their social integration plans. The partnership was what Spotify needed to find a strong foothold in the already competitive and cut throat music streaming market. A major deal and integration with the largest social network and cross platform presence helped Spotify target millions in an instant. The globally popular Internet based music streaming services (Zune, Rdio, Spotify) do not have a huge South Asian music (Indian & Pakistan) catalogue or aren’t available in India. Indian music startup Saavn hopes to replicate Spotify’s success and fill the gap for Indian music lovers.
Music streaming sites can be considered as an alternative to help reduce piracy in many parts of the world but Internet in India cannot be trusted; having local media is still the best bet. Having said that, services like Saavn should help labels, artists, and users who don’t want to pirate, with better access to music. Facebook’s integration with Saavn works like Rdio or Spotify’s. Saavn does not have a desktop client and is more like Rdio, Saavn’s website lets you search for music, create playlists, choose from existing playlists or let the site choose songs for you.
If I am listening to a song through Saavn, Facebook’s integration will let you launch the same song from the website. According to Leena Rao at TechCrunch, Saavn has seen a 40x increase in users in their first 4 weeks of Facebook integration.
