Independent artists see Saavn and Gaana as launch pads for original music

Online music streaming platforms have come up with initiatives to bring to their audience original music by tapping independent artists.

On these platforms, artists have a new place to showcase their music and this gives online music streaming platforms more variety for their collection, Mint reported.

For companies like Saavn and Gaana, helping such artists produce and distribute their music is worth it because it brings to the table songs that aren't featured in Bollywood and regional films. This way, subscribers are offered a wide range of songs from different genres of music.

These platforms are trying to up their game as their customers are forfeiting subscriptions and online advertising is not picking up either.

The idea of bringing original music to the Saavn and Gaana libraries is a win-win situation for both the companies and the artists. For these artists, producing and distributing songs is an expensive affair, but streaming platforms take care of these costs and cut down the work and expenditure involved in distribution by promoting their work.

While international and western markets produce more than 100,000 songs in a year, Indian markets see only around 1,500-2,000 songs in the same period. The disparity is huge as many independents artists don’t have distribution platforms.

Both Saavn and Gaana have already started working with independent artists. Saavn launched its first original track in February this year in collaboration with rapper Naezy under its ‘Artist Originals’ initiative. Meanwhile, Gaana launched ‘Gaana Originals’ in September that generated 20 million streams.

Are the songs by independent artists finding any listeners? While Bollywood’s top five tracks generated 27 million views in a five week period between September to October 2017, Gaana Originals came close with 20 million streams with six tracks during the same timeline.