By Tanya Agarwal
The exponential increase in the online market has attracted many new players and given many new opportunities for expansion to the existing ones as well. Music streaming has become a highly profitable business and captures a majority of the revenue of the Indian music industry.
In India, the industry is worth a total of Rs 8.54 billion (seventy percent of the revenue generated by the music industry as a whole). This fact was stated in the 2017 report published by KPMG and the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Amazon tried to capture the market with Amazon Music a few months back and now, JioMusic too has entered the race. Recently, JioMusic announced a merger with perhaps the most renowned online music streaming service in the country, Saavn, equating their combined valuation at $1 billion.
The success of JioMusic
JioMusic has been the fastest-growing music streaming app for the past sixty weeks on the Indian market. Providing access to more than 16 million songs in High Definition (HD), in around 20 languages, the app has been able to source content from all the major national and international labels. This rapid growth of the platform can be attributed to the differentiated experience offered by the JioMusic app, with a huge variety of songs to choose from and listen to.
A breakdown of the partnership
Jio’s estimated valuation of $670 million along with the $330 million of Saavn amount to a combined valuation of a whopping $1 billion, giving the partnership a strategic position in the music streaming industry. Moreover, Jio has bought shares of Saavn, worth $104 million, giving it a partial stake in the company. Thus, it has now joined the consortium, consisting of Liberty Media, Tiger Global Management and Bertelsmann, as the existing stakeholders in Saavn.
Immense scope
The two giants are pegged to become a media platform that will give them global outreach, an independent artist market-space and original, international content. According to the market, the digital ecosystem and connectivity of Jio will give a boost to the streaming media expertise of Saavn, making their collaboration a huge success.
The Director of Reliance Jio, Mr Mukesh Ambani, expressed his content with the partnership of Jio and Saavn while providing an optimistic outlook about the future of this alliance. According to him, this step towards better management and experience will give a boost to the digital ecosystem. He wants to provide his customers with a seamless experience of listening to unlimited music with uninterrupted network connectivity. Both the firms are planning to achieve the leadership position in the music streaming industry of India.
Paramdeep Singh, the co-founder and Executive Vice-Chairman at Saavn, reciprocated Mr Ambanis optimism. Ever since its inception, Saavn has been revolutionising digital music in the nation and this partnership compliments its vision to become a leader in the industry.