Bytedance, the parent company of the hyper-popular music micro-video social network, has found a formula to further boost its application and encourage users to share their favorite songs with their friends: Resso has arrived, a new music streaming application.
A new music streaming that lands in India and Indonesia
Resso describes herself as a “music streaming app” and encourage users to share lyrics, comments, and of course, user-generated content, while the music starts playing automatically as soon as you open the app.
Unlike TikTok, which is free to use and primarily bases its revenue on an ad model, Resso is following the freemium route that other streaming services like : A free tier that includes ads and limits streaming to 128kbps, and a premium tier, which removes ads, increases streaming to 256kbps, and includes downloads.
For now, Resso is available in India and Indonesia, two markets where the streaming app has been on trial for a couple of months. The choice to focus on India first was based on taking advantage of the massive youthful population of mobile users in the country.
“India has the largest population of generation Z compared to any other country in the world”, commented , director of content and music association of Resso India. “Since the core of Resso’s target audience is Gen Z, it’s only fitting that Resso make its debut in this country.. We will discuss rollout in additional markets later.”.
In fact TikTok is already a giant in India: it had around 200 million users as of October 2019, and expects to add another 100 million this year in that country.
Universal could be left out of Resso
For now, Resso has licensing agreements with Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Merlin Beggars Group, as well as major publishers specifically from the Indian market. The big absentee is Universal Music, one of the three giants in the music industry, but this may be because one of its biggest investors is Bytedance’s arch-rival, which acquired 10% of Universal at the end of 2019.
Until now Resso has been installed for approximately 1 million installswith 600,000 installations in India and 400,000 in Indonesia. “All of our marketing efforts are focused on building a strong community of passionate music fans”.
“The idea is to have a digital-first approach where we identify the right set of audience groups and communicate with them”.
The music streaming market is very competitive, and in India Resso will not only compete against Spotify, but against Apple Music, YouTube Music and Gaana, among others.
A community: what could set the streaming platform apart from TikTok
However, due to the huge success of TikTok, it may be that Resso has a differential advantage due to its connection with the social network and the feeling of creating a community. Of course, Resso represents for TikTok an increase in its catalog and the essential music licenses for its micro-videos.
In addition, Resso has an option that synchronizes the lyrics of the songs so that users can perform a karaoke that is so popular on TikTok, its interface is designed to persuade users to share lyrics directly on other services like WhatsApp or Facebook, and of course, on TikTok.
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