Gaana revamps apps to put focus on personalised search, lyrics in player

This Personalized Music Feed at Search will rely on machine-learning and AI-based algorithms to recommend music to users. Gaana, which claims to have 80 million monthly active users ,will rely on the past experiences of users – as well as the entire universe of users who are consuming similar music – to recommend the next song.

“We are looking at affinity-based consumption. We take the genre, singer, and things like that into account, when recommending the next few songs,” Agarwal said.

He also claims that the company is relying on its own unique algorithms, which cannot be simply imported from the West.

“The Western ecosystem has fixed genres, but in India, these very, very definite set of genres does not exist. Bollywood is an amalgamation of everything. A much more complicated algorithm is needed and we have been working on this for over 11 months,” he said.

On whether there are possible privacy concerns, Agarwal said that while the personalised recommendation feature cannot be turned off, the algorithm is also looking very generic points when it comes to data.

On the voice-based search aspect, Gaana is relying on Google’s system in the backend, which it says ensures seamless integration with almost 19-20 Indian languages and works accurately. The voice search feature can be used to play songs based on the name, title, name of the singer or even according to genre or moods. For instance, users can ask the search option to play romantic songs or party songs.

Agarwal claims voice search has picked up for the company, though it still accounts for only. 22 per cent of their user base. He points out that the newer users coming on the platform – especially those from tier 2, tier 3 towns – are relying on voice search because of its convenience.

As part of the redesign, Gaana’s full player will now support lyrics as well so that users can sing along while listening to the music. The CEO says they hope this will increase stickiness of the app as well, and claims this is a unique feature of the app. The feature will be made available to all, not just the paid subscriber base.

Agarwal admits that while their paid subscriber base is still low, it has been growing 100 per cent, though he does not give an exact percentage. He points out that in India, the overall online music ecosystem has around 150 million users, which is just 15 per cent of the population. “There is huge scope for growth for all players,” he says.