Quick Hits: Saavn profile; Big Machine’s streaming plans

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Up close and personal with Saavn: Saavn may be headquartered in the U.S., but its efforts have largely focused on reaching Indian listeners. The platform began with just music streaming and has since added original content and services reminiscent of traditional record labels. Music Business Worldwide spoke with two execs from Saavn about that shift. “Instead of just supporting artists through promotion, we wanted to take it one step deeper and help them develop their music and get it out there on economics that are favourable to them, and that they can’t find anywhere else,” co-founder Paramdeep Singh said.

Behind the scenes with Big Machine’s streaming plan: Big Machine, best known as pop queen Taylor Swift’s label, announced plans to launch its own streaming entity back in April. PublicVine founder and CEO Nam Mokwunye gave an interview about his company’s work to power the upcoming service. “The streaming music platform business is essentially dominated by major aggregators that are big technology companies that basically take other people’s assets and then make money from them and give them back a small piece of the pie,” he said. “Big Machine is one of those labels and their artists have been very vocal about how dissatisfied they were with the piece of the pie they were getting.”

 

Anna Washenko