Few days ago I was talking with a colleague about music, and I told him that I have subscribed to a music service and I pay for it. He was shocked to hear that I pay for music. The idea of subscribing to a music service is still not at helm in India. Companies have been trying hard to get more users onboard. He asked me why do I use a subscription service.
My answer was that I like the convenience of having millions of songs at my fingertips. And I need not to worry about quality as well. I don’t claim to be a music fanatic, and I also don’t have “Listening to music” as my hobby.
But, I do listen to a fair amount of music and I also like to discover new artist and songs. I was streaming songs from long time Spotify and other services, but I was part of no subscription service. So offline access was still a problem for me.
Most of the music streaming services in India charge Rs. 60-120 for the premium account which removes ads and lets you download the music for offline access. And this charge is even less than a cup of coffee. And you get to legally store the music on your devices.
A couple of years ago, if a new song or an album came out we frantically searched for them on websites like DJ Mazaa or songs.pk. Or if it was an international album we searched a torrent for it.
Most of us used computers to download. Then later on we fumbled with USB cables to transfer it to our phones with limited memory. For new music, we relied on friends’ suggestions or someone’s collection stored in a portable hard disk.
Now, streaming services in India covers Bollywood portfolio well, but they didn’t have an extensive international library, yet I gave a shot to subscription models and from then I never looked back. I had a month of trial for both Saavn and Gaana.
They worked for me pretty well. I could download a couple of songs or albums I want to listen to while travelling for offline access. And you can always stream the songs you haven’t downloaded. No hassle of searching and transferring the songs for a long time sitting in front of your computer. And that was a huge selling point for me.
I ended up choosing Gaana because updated app on Android and a good library. The iPad app from Gaana was still missing, but my iPad being Wi-Fi only didn’t make much difference. Still there were some qualms about syncing and slow search.
This January an international streaming service Rdio, launched in India and I immediately jumped that bandwagon because it is one of the best available service out there. They have a library of almost 30 million songs. My only complaint with the service is that the Android app crashes a lot. Otherwise, quality is great to listen to and search is also pretty fast.
Apart from Rdio, I am also trying out Apple Music which is available only on iOS, Mac and Windows right now. Till September, the service is free. I am loving the Beats 1 radio station which is curated by DJs all around the world and give a retro Radio touch to it.
I am very much sure that in near future more people would be onboard for paying for music subscription model. I suggest to at least try out a few services if you listen to good amount of music and trust me, you won’t like to go back to transferring songs. If you want to know more about pricing and features, NDTV Gadgets has an amazing article comparing all the services.
B for Byte 