Gaana, which focused on HTML5 for a very long time has finally launched its apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Nokia and Samsung devices (link: Gaana.com).
Gaana app features include:
- Access to over 1 million songs, including Bollywood, Hollywood, Tamil, Telegu, and regional music
- Social listening: see what your friends are listening to
- My zone: an ability to see your history, your favorite songs, playlists, albums and artists across your computer or mobile phone (automatically synced in real-time across all devices)
- Radio mode: make your own radio station automatically, based on any song you play.
- Curated playlists from radio channels like Radio Mirchi and others, to help you find new music you’ll love.
Review: Gaana App (Android)
The Gaana app on Androd works even on a 2G connection but is painfully slow to download. On 3G and WiFi, it streams songs very well and you won’t have to wait for the songs to buffer. A drawback is that you can’t rewind or fast forward a song.
Moreover, search functionality is yet to be optimized. For instance, when you search for K J Yesudas, you’d expect it to return some of his hit songs to pop up. But instead, you get some of his relatively unknown songs. For a singer who has more than 50,000 songs to his credit, the app returns about 40 results. But that’s probably not an app specific problem. It could have to do with rights, licenses and a bunch of other things the music industry is particular about.
As far as the iOS app is concerned, it’s primarily an iPhone app (2X for iPad).
Overall, this is an interesting move by Gaana and the company claims to be receiving 3 million visitors per month (highest in this category).
Online Music in India
Last year, digital music sold more than physical ones and Gaana competitors like Dhingana has raised $7mn, Intel funded Hungama launched its HTML5 site and Saavn launched English collection.
Do give Gaana app a spin and share your comments. Which is your fav app?
Recommended Read: Digital Music in India: THE Recap.
Qn: When is Gaana opening up its api?
