An IIT Kanpur alumnus, Pawan Agarwal is the Business Head of Gaana.com- music streaming portal by Times Internet. With over 11 years of experience, prior to joining Gaana, he was the COO at Sunstone Business School. He has been associated with companies like Lime Labs India, GlobalLogic, Xthetic Systems and Amsoft Systems in various capacities.

In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Pawan talks about the new look of Gaana.com, the uptake of the platform on mobile and regional music tie-ups.

Firstly, what prompted the site’s new look?

Gaana.com is the numero uno music streaming service in India, and we have always wanted to provide a world-class music experience to our users. The main intent was to give the users an enhanced experience while keeping it simple.

The new look, packaged with a faster search engine, makes it easier to browse and discover favorite music from a large collection of over 2 million songs. The available music catalogue is spread across Bollywood, International and Regional spanning 84 languages and multiple genres. The new site boasts of thousands of editorially curated playlists, professionally programmed radio streams and a host of social & personalization features. Gaana 3.0 has moved to a flat and responsive design and is much lighter than the previous version and hence is better organized for easier music discovery.

How has been the uptake of the platform so far?

Gaana has a registered user base of over 2.5 million users with over 6 Million unique visitors and is growing rapidly. The engagement metrics on the site in terms of average listening time are pretty encouraging and are expected to go higher up with the new version.

How is the mobile platform of the site doing? Do you get more traffic through mobile phones or computers?

Uptake of Gaana has been equally good on mobile too. We have a substantial user base on mobile which uses mobiles to access Gaana on Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows platforms and Java enabled devices. The mobile users of Gaana are also growing at a swift pace.

How far is the regional music responsible for driving traffic to the site?

We have an extensive catalogue of regional content and the widest catalogue of English content. These along with our Bollywood content have been responsible for driving the traffic to our site. At Gaana, we plan to roll out customized music profile for our users based on their content preferences in the coming months.

Do you have any more such tie-ups with regional music players in the pipeline?

We have been discussing content tie ups with a lot of regional music labels and you will see this in the coming months.

How well has been the monetization of Gaana.com so far?

While monetization on the site has been good, providing the consumers with an engaging music experience through a world-class product has been our top most priority. We strongly believe that if we get the product right, monetization will follow.