JioSaavn is an Indian

music streaming service A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

and a digital distributor of music in

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

, English,

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

, Bengali,

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

, Telugu,

Bhojpuri Bhojpuri may refer to: * Bhojpuri language, an Indo-Aryan language of India and Nepal * Bhojpuri grammar, grammatical rules of the language * Bhojpuri nouns, nouns of the language * Bhojpuri people, people who speak the language * Bhojpuri region ...

, Punjabi,

Chhattisgarhi Chhattisgarhi () is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 16.25 million people from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in India. It is the official language of Chhattisgarh. It is grouped within the Eastern Hindi lan ...

and other regional

languages of India Languages of India belong to several list of language families, language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indian people, Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both fami ...

. Since it was founded in 2007 as Saavn, the company has acquired rights to over 80 million music tracks in 16 languages. JioSaavn is a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ( ...

service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality and music downloads for offline listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. On 23 March 2018, Saavn announced merger with

Jio Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (d/b/a Jio) is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai. It operates a national LTE (telecommunication), LTE network with coverage across all 22 telecom ...

in a deal worth more than $1 billion. The merger was completed in December 2018, with Saavn being rebranded JioSaavn.

History

Saavn was founded in 2006 as BODVOD Network and initially distributed

Hindi Cinema Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...

content in North America in a B2B offering. Saavn later shifted its core focus to become a music destination for fans of Bollywood and other Indic music in 2009, re-launching its flagship product, Saavn.com, to become a B2C product. As of today, Saavn is one of the largest distributors of Bollywood and other Indian entertainment in the world. On March 23, 2018,

Reliance Industries Reliance Industries Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai. Its businesses include energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, entertainment, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. Reliance is the ...

acquired a majority stake in Saavn and its digital music service, JioMusic. The combined entity is valued at over US$1 billion and renamed as JioSaavn.

Products and services

JioSaavn's products are JioSaavn Pro, its music service that offers offline listening without advertisements, with improved music quality and its mobile apps, JioSaavn for Android and iOS. Saavn also integrated a social networking feature with its music streaming service in April 2015. Saavn Social allows users to follow the profiles and playlists of their friends as well as celebrities. Users can share any song, album or playlist with their friends and chat about music in real time.

Revenue model

JioSaavn's business model is based on digital advertising services (offers service with advertisements) and a subscription-based business model (JioSaavn Pro, offers ad-free and offline streaming).

Partnerships

Amazon

JioSaavn was one of the first music streaming services in India to be made available on Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, which shipped nationwide in October 2017.

Shazam

In 2013, Shazam, a media engagement company, entered into an exclusive partnership with Saavn. As a part of this, Saavn's music library was incorporated in Shazam's music database. Saavn aims to provide its users with an enhanced listening experience with Shazam's music engagement tools especially in popular genres like bhangra, devotional,

ghazal ''Ghazal'' is a form of amatory poem or ode, originating in Arabic poetry that often deals with topics of spiritual and romantic love. It may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss, or separation from the beloved, and t ...

s, Carnatic, Indipop and regional language music like

, Punjabi,

, Telugu, Gujarati,

, Bengali,

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

and

Twitter

Saavn launched its radio model in 2013 and later partnered with Twitter to crowd-source song requests via the custom handle @SaavnRadio.

Apps for iOS, Android and Windows 10

In 2010, Saavn introduced its first mobile app - Saavn Music for Android. This was followed up with Saavn Music for iPhone. Saavn for iOS has received 9,000+ ratings with an average rating of 4.5 Stars. In mid-2011, Saavn added its latest app, Saavn Music for Chrome, to the Chrome Web Store and later on

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

running

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

Facebook

Saavn was selected in December, 2011 to be Facebook's first global partner and Indian partner on the Open Graph platform. This integration with Facebook allows users to stream any of Saavn's millions of tracks using their Facebook logins and to listen to music from Facebook. In the first three days of launch, Open Graph doubled the total number of visitors to Saavn.com, and increased the number of visitors from Facebook to Saavn by 15 times. Nearly half of Saavn's user base uses Facebook Connect.

Sony Music

Saavn partnered with

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the ...

to acquire Sony's entire database of music catalog in 2012.

Other partners

Saavn has 900+ label partnerships including

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...

, T-Series, Tips, YRF,

Saregama Saregama India Ltd is an Indian music record label and content company headquartered in Kolkata, West Bengal. It is the oldest music label in India, established in 1901 as the Indian branch of the British Gramophone Company. It later became ...

Zee Music Company Zee Music Co. (ZMC) is an Indian music company, a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment Enterprises. It carries its business activities mainly from New Delhi. The company has captured a major chunk of market share in Music of Bollywood, Bollywood m ...

, Eros Music,

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp., commonly abbreviated as WMG, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational entertainment and record label Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "Record label#M ...

and

Independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small and medium-sized enterprise, small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels ...

. Saavn's brand partners include global names like AT&T, Bose, Lays, General Motors, Nokia, Samsung, and Western Union.

Creative collaborator

Saavn teamed up with popular Bollywood actor

Ranbir Kapoor Ranbir Kapoor (; born 28 September 1982) is an Indian actor known for his work in Hindi-language films. He is one of the highest-paid actors of Hindi cinema and has featured in ''Forbes India'' Celebrity 100 list since 2012. Kapoor is the re ...

in 2014. He joined Saavn to collaborate on consumer marketing ideas and business development. The actor was reportedly interested in working at a more business-oriented level at Saavn. He has expressed his desire to help "guide the brand, influence programming, connect with the next generation of music listeners and ultimately help build the best music product in India and potentially the world." The partnership led to a number of ad campaigns that were launched in India and select international networks and generated more than 7 million combined YouTube views. Ranbir Kapoor is also co-owner / part-owner of Saavn.

Corporate social responsibility

In February 2015, Saavn partnered with philanthropy non-profit Akshaya Patra Foundation for the launch of #MusicForMeals. For every hour of music streamed on Saavn, the company helps provide mid-day meals to school-going children through Akshaya Patra's network of schools. Saavn also works with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), a not-for-profit industry body that represents the interests of mobile and online value added services in India. In May 2015, Saavn co-founder and president Vinodh Bhat was named as vice-chairman of IAMAI.

Switch to subscription-only service

Beginning November 2016, Saavn started moving to a paid-only model (except

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

), initially offering listening for free for 30 days and after that a monthly subscription fee of $4.99.

Saavn original programs

Saavn Artist in Residence

In 2016, Saavn launched its Artist In Residence (AiR) program with indie artist Nucleya.

Saavn Originals

Saavn later expanded its content offering into Saavn Original Programming, a slate of original, non-music audio programs that range from Bollywood to comedy and storytelling to cricket. Saavn's audio shows include ''No Filter Neha'', ''Qisson ka Kona with Neelesh Misra'', ''Trial by Error: The Aarushi Files'', and ''Kahaani Express''.

Saavn Verified Artists

Saavn verifies their authentic artists by providing a verification badge on their profiles.

Artist Originals

In early 2017, JioSaavn introduced Artist Originals (AO), an original music program releasing and marketing tracks and albums by South Asian artists, songwriters and producers from around the world. JioSaavn was the first streaming app to offer original audio programming in India. Indian hip-hop star Naezy, Toronto-based DJ Sickick, singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad, U.K.-based independent artists Zack Knight and Jasmin Walia, electronic artist Sandunes, Canadian artist The PropheC, contemporary classical duo Shadow and Light and UK musician Raxstar have also launched songs under the Artist Originals program.

Spotted

Warner Music India and JioSaavn announced the launch of ‘Spotted’- an artist discovery program. The program is designed to bring together the ecosystem that enables artists to reach their optimum potential. JioSaavn will collaborate with Warner Music India, to be able to release audio and video content. This partnership will create a stimulating environment for creators.

References

External links

* {{Music streaming services Android (operating system) software Online music stores of India IOS software Jukebox-style media players Online music and lyrics databases Online music database clients Music streaming services 2018 mergers and acquisitions Reliance Industries subsidiaries Jio Indian companies established in 2007