Nova Posted September 12, 2012 Posted September 12, 2012 Saavn, a startup that's been called the Spotify for Indian music, has launched a J2ME mobile app, tailored for feature phone handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Motorola. Saavn is also announcing six new languages for its iOS, Android and Web apps including Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Gujarati. Saavn (which stands for South Asian Audio Video Network) is an ad-supported digital music service for Bollywood, Indian and regional South Asian music. The service allows users to create and listen to playlists for free; Saavn makes money via targeted display and rich media ad units for global advertisers. The platform is similar to Spotify in that it allows users to listen to Indian music on-demand and create and share playlists, and also adds an element of Pandora with a radio function. Users can create radio stations by song, and Saavn will show users similar songs to the initial track. The company boasts the most comprehensive catalogue of Indian music, licensed from over 200 content providers. While the service is free, premium features include offline access and more. Saavn has 1million-plus tracks under license, which is 99% of the known catalog across Bollywood, regional, and devotional music. For Saavn, which offers Facebook, iOS and Android apps as well, the move to Java devices is expected to grow users not only in India, where there are over 350 million J2ME handsets, but also in other countries where Indian music is popular, including Morocco and the Philippines. As Savvn explains, there are currently 350 million J2ME phones in India, while there are only 20 million smartphone devices in use. Some of the core features in the J2ME app include an adaptive streaming algorithm (which streams music files over 2G connections from cell towers at max capacity; and real time pinging of cell towers to get strength of connection and stream appropriate quality of files In addition to its popular apps for Android, iOS, the Web and now J2ME, the company is currently developing its music products for launch on Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile platforms. http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/29/the-spotify-for-india-saavn-brings-streaming-music-service-to-feature-phones/ This is great considering the "feature phone" market with 2G connection in India is huge. On a side note, if one wants to listen to 2-3 hours of music everyday, over a 2G connection in India, how much would the service provider charge the end user for such bandwidth? Any idea?
Crookbond Posted September 12, 2012 Posted September 12, 2012 Saavn already has iOS and Android apps and it is a decent app - not out of the world like a Spotify or Grooveshark. It doesn't have great UI for arranging your music though. Further, I am skeptical of a 2G connection playing streaming music without interruptions. On a side note, if one wants to listen to 2-3 hours of music everyday, over a 2G connection in India, how much would the service provider charge the end user for such bandwidth? Any idea? 2G plans are very cheap these days. Most of them charge INR 98 per month (Aircel, Airtel, Docomo) with a 2G data transfer limit - this should not exceed if you play music for 2-3 hours a day. If you exceed 2GB you are charged a nominal fee - check out respective websites. The major problem I see with this is the battery life which is not optimized to play music.
Nova Posted September 12, 2012 Author Posted September 12, 2012 BTW, I am using Spotify in the US and it's just amazing. :)
Nova Posted September 12, 2012 Author Posted September 12, 2012 Further' date=' I am skeptical of a 2G connection playing streaming music without interruptions. [/quote'] Well they seem to have come up with an adaptive algorithm to solve this problem. But yeah..don't know how effective it will be in real world conditions. Thanks for the info. Good point!
Nova Posted September 12, 2012 Author Posted September 12, 2012 Dexter... I ended up editing your post with my reply accidentally. :wall: Please repost your thoughts again, if you can. My apologies! I will do a simple Test tonight on my iPhone. Play Saavn without my 3G connection and check how it fares. Ah brilliant.. please do share your experience. Unlike Spotify, many songs are not available on Saavn and I need to move outside the environment to hear my favorite songs. Saavn is geared towards South Asia and according to the article above, it has 99% of the known catalog across Bollywood. If this is indeed true, then it's just amazing. Most of the music at your finger tips through the cloud...this is the future. Forget downloading unless you are an audiophile who seeks higher bitrates. So, along with the technical constraints there are business constraints like deal with music record labels etc. In any case, at least someone is doing something about it! I likes. The music industry is going to have to jump in on this eventually, especially the ones who are reluctant. Join the revolution or get buried. At least in the US, Spotify now accounts for the second largest revenue source after itunes. It's good for the consumer. But if you look from the artists' point of view the pay out is dismal - they get one third of a cent for every file streamed [1]. [1] http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/03/less-than-a-stinkin-cent/
Crookbond Posted September 12, 2012 Posted September 12, 2012 Mango man - :yousuck: Ek aam aadmi ka wonderfully written post edit kiya :sniffle: * I don't think Saavn has 90% of the catalog. Even if it does, its search feature sucks. It should be difficult to fix it due to variations in transliterated text. * EDGE (Enhanced GPRS) max. speed is 59 kb/s with 9 - Phase Shift Keying Modulation Coding Scheme. In reality, it comes to 44 kb/s which is the dial up internet speed. Difficult to stream any quality song at that speed. * A more reasonable way is to save songs for each session and across sessions. I am not sure if there are some statistics but my understanding is that most users like listening to a set of songs in a give period of time. Of course, this should mean more storage but is not an issue today. One can easily save favorite/starred songs across sessions * From an artists POV, your main goal is to make your art popular. In any case, it is always a consumer's market. I remember the time when YouTube took down music videos and now we have VEVO & everything has changed.
Crookbond Posted September 13, 2012 Posted September 13, 2012 I was right with my assessment - they can't stream via 2G Internet. It takes forever for a song to load as per my tests. I wonder if they are using radio but that should be tricky with licensing.
Nova Posted September 13, 2012 Author Posted September 13, 2012 ^ Service :fail: then. Marketing hype..that is all I guess.
Crookbond Posted September 13, 2012 Posted September 13, 2012 I tried this on my iPhone4S Saavn app. It works smoothly on WiFi and 3G without any interruption.My phone network signal was full. I switched off my 3G phone and tried to play a song "Jhallah Wallah" from Ishqzaade. Important to note that this is a starred/favorited song in my playlist. I switched of my 3G/WiFi and proceeded to hear this on 2G in the HQ version. You can switch song quality - Low, Medium and High. The HQ version does not load even after 2 minutes of time. I switched to the lowest quality version and it loaded within 1 minute but only streamed 45 seconds of the song after which it started buffering again. I fail to see how Saavn makes this work.
AGHORI Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 ^ Service :fail: then. Marketing hype..that is all I guess. Iam using docomo 2g internet on my tablet and saavn is working well
Crookbond Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 Can you post a screenshot? The first two are on HQ quality and the last is on lowest quality.
AGHORI Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 Soundly quality is good.I need to check it once more to find the details about sound quality after that i will update
AGHORI Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 I checked it,i think it plays low quality audio but still sound is good,songs loads with in 5 seconds and browsed the internet while playing the songs on 2g
Crookbond Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 I checked it' date='i think it plays low quality audio but still sound is good,songs loads with in 5 seconds and browsed the internet while playing the songs on 2g[/quote'] Please link me to the app. Also tell me the name of your tablet, your service provider and your area. Thanks! It is best if you get a screenshot of your tablet home screen to confirm you are playing on 2G data.
AGHORI Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 I downloaded it from google play,and iam using docomo 2g internet pack,i tried it on airtel 2g,but it takes more time to load the songs,I used the app on a samsung tab and a chinese tab,it works smoothly on both of them
Desi Cartman Posted September 14, 2012 Posted September 14, 2012 There is desimusic and Dhingana app which work as good as any other. I dont understand whats so special about this one, but still I will give it a go BTW both apps that I mentioned work on 3G
Rajiv Posted September 16, 2012 Posted September 16, 2012 I used this today, was pretty good for news songs
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