Saavn was the first audio streaming service in
India, so you had a lead. When you came to the
company in 2008, what was the biggest problem
you needed to solve?
Indian music was so disorganized, and we have
over a thousand labels, none of which had catego-
rized their catalog for digital hygiene. There was no
metadata, and what was there was inconsistent and
inaccurate. We knew we could build a solution; we
could organize the disorganized.India’s telecom revolution resulted in a music-
streaming explosion, and now you’re competing
with local companies but also multinationals like
Spotify, Apple, Google and Amazon. How has that
changed your strategy?
We’ve been doing this for a long time, so we have the
data, products and understanding of regionalization
and localization — whether that’s playlists or how we
speak to consumers or what content deals we green-
light. For us, India is not a secondary market like it is
for Apple and Spotify. This is our market.Only 1% of India’s streaming consumers pay for
subscriptions. In 2018 JioSaavn cut its prices and
it’s now among the cheapest mainstream options.
How has that helped in attracting subscribers?
In 2019 we’ve grown by 300% in paid subscriptions,
and 70% of our revenue is driven by subscription.
Among the diaspora, we have a pretty good con-
centration of users who pay. The more valuable a
service gets, two things happen simultaneously: The
conversion rate goes up, and the number of people
leaving the platform goes down. In India, music was
pirated for so many years that it was almost equiva-
lent to free. But we know that people want to be on
music apps. Well over 100 million users are spending
45 minutes to one hour per day on them — and if you
have their time, you can generate value from that.Gaana just announced it has 152 million monthly
active users. Is there a reason you haven’t
announced your figures since Reliance Industries
acquired Saavn in 2018?
The press optics in the country are very dangerous
because it costs a lot of money to overmarket. We
got caught in that years ago, when we were in our
private equity days. Then we decided, “Let’s focus
on real users and real engagement.” If we didn’t
have those numbers and didn’t have that depth,
there’s no way all of these labels and artists would
be coming to work with us.Is Gaana still your most important rival?
Yes — and we monitor the competition daily. We’re
always paranoid. There are certain things that they
do better, and there are a lot of things that we do
better. When you’re building a business, it’s not
just what you’re doing that day, but what’s your
next day’s plan. Every service has to achieve scale
and meaning before it can monetize. We’ve reached
those measures, and now the entire company is
focused on monetization. Even pieces of content
we greenlight, we look at how it can be monetized.
Everyone says, “Get Indians to pay.” I don’t look
at it that way. I look at it as, “Produce value that’s
worth paying for.”In 2017, you launched Artist Originals, an initiative
that you’ve called an “in-house streaming label.”
How does that work?
We realized the service could be a one-stop shop
for an artist. We were also sitting on a lot of data,
like artists becoming popular on JioSaavn who
weren’t on the labels’ radar. We don’t sign anyone
who’s already on a label — we only sign independent
artists. JioSaavn shares ownership of the master
recordings and the publishing. Traditional record
labels are still, and will always be, our biggest
partners. At the beginning, there was a little bit of
irritation from labels, but when we met with them,
we said to think of it as A&R.One of the Artist Originals tracks — “Bom Diggy”
by Zack Knight and Jasmin Walia — became a
huge Bollywood hit. Are you essentially creating
a synch operation?
You’ll see some job descriptions being posted online
for synch. We have film producers calling us, and we
just got an inquiry from one of the big, over-the-toptelevision players for a movie [because] they needed
some music recommendations. A lot of the stuff that
comes to us — we’re the first to hear it. Other labels
passed on “Bom Diggy” before it came to us.Last August, the Indian Music Industry trade or-
ganization said the total number of monthly active
listeners for the country’s streaming services is
250 million. But three services claim to have over
100 million monthly users each. Does that mean
there’s a need for a third-party validation system?
That would be a great thing for the country. There
are all these different platforms available and
proxy data you can pull from different telcos,
but if there were a group that became the validat-
ing source, that couldn’t be influenced, it could
be really powerful. You’d save a lot of money
that’s now wasted on marketing and could be allo-
cated toward innovating on product. But it’s not
just about the number of users — it’s how engaged
they are and how much data they’re using. Those
things don’t lie.1. Illmatic by Nas (left): “One of the most definitive works in hip-
hop. We had the opportunity to develop a record with Nas in 2019.
This limited-edition LP was given to me by JioSaavn designer Doug
Davala.” Right: The December 2007 issue of XXL featuring JAY-Z:
“He has always been an entrepreneurial inspiration,” says Malhotra.
“This was given to me framed. The headline is ‘Return of the Hustle’
— always good advice.” 2. An autographed poster of The Wire:
“I worked on The Wire while at HBO. Michael K. Williams, who
played Omar (pictured), sent me this as a thank you.” 3. “I love
collectibles with character and energy,” says Malhotra. “I found this
little guy in Miami, and he’s always a conversation starter — made
by the company Blamo Toys.”
312RECORDS PROMOTED NORVA DENTON TO SENIOR VP A&R. MUSIC EXECUTIVES JODY GERSON, MICHELE ANTHONY AND JON PLATT JOINED THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME FOUNDATION BOARD.
GROOMING BY CECILIA ROMERO AT ENNISFEBRUARY 29, 2020 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 23