MUMBAI: According to music services MixRadio, Rdio and Guvera, their strength lies in curated content, and they are looking at enormous growth opportunity in India in the coming years, stated the representatives of the various streaming sites. The view on growth was also echoed by Believe Digital’s sales head Sylvian Delange.

There were various other topics like Meta-data, personalised radio stations or content, social media usage and payment models discussed on a panel moderated by Times Music COO Mandar Thakur. Panelists in the session included MixRadio senior product manager Melissa Price, Rdio emerging market VP Snehal Shinde, Guvera Limited innovation director and founder Claes Loberg and Believe Digital sales head Sylvian Delange.

Shinde who co-founded Dhingana before the music streaming site shut down services to join Rdio, believes that curated content is the key to keeping existing listeners and getting new ones. During the session, Shinde confirmed that Rdio will launch its services in India by the end of this year or early next year.

However, before that happens, Australian music streaming site Guvera will be launched in the country. The site is already live in India, but will be officially launched on 6 November. Loberg talking about his product stated, “We build innovate tools around our products. Social media drives our product and we will use tools that suit the Indian user. We will have a personal radio in India.”

Talking about the changing needs of consumers, Melissa Price recollected the times when MixRadio was part of Nokia and how it evolved based on the needs of consumers. Price said, “From late 2010, we have evolved and have changed our product according to the needs of our consumers. We focussed on making music easily available to consumers.” She further stated that the offline feature of MixRadio is the way forward given the data connection in India.

All three services mentioned the need to have a feature called ‘Radio’ which would be more or less, a curated playlist, to which Thakur commented that including radio in music streaming would be like “Old world meeting new world.”

The conversion of curated content was followed by the much talked about ‘meta-data’. Price said, “It is very important to get right meta-data in place because it is very valuable in India due the variation in India.” She pointed out that meta-data plays a crucial role as artistes cross territories with the help of music streaming services.

Delange added to the meta-data conversation by saying that if music services like MixRadio, Rdio and Guvera provided independent companies like Believe Digital with the right information, it would help them implement the demographic information to reach the consumers.

Speaking on how social media could help curated playlists, Shinde stated that he considered Facebook ‘Likes’ to be “deceiving”. However, Loberg revealed that Guvera works with all kinds of social media for its curated playlist, while Price stated that MixRadio works closely with bloggers and also encompasses the opportunity available on social media. “This helps our music head in different spheres,” she added.

During the Question and Answer session, SIMCA’s Rajesh Dhupad quizzed whether or not the music industry would be able to exist in the free model, to which Delange said that labels are earning through the model and in years to come they will make profit through subscription as well.