Times Internet's Gaana.com Acquires Musicfellas, an Indie Music Social Discovery Portal

Updates:

MusicFellas would no longer function as an independent portal. The team is currently working on a integration plan. Previous users would be given ample time to download their previously purchased songs before the portal is completely closed for access.

Times Internet’s music streaming service, Gaana.com has acquired an Indie Music Social Discovery Platform, Musicfellas, for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, Gaana.com will have access to Musicfellas’s catalog by 700 independent artists. Gaana, which had Bollywood, regional and international music on its site, will now be able to differentiate itself from its counterparts Saavn and Dhingana.

MusicFellas was co-founded by a BITS-Pilani alumnus Gaurav Shahlot and two IIT Roorkee alumni, Mayank and Shubhranshu Jain in November 2012. The start up was was incubated by TLabs, a technology accelerator and seed fund run by Times Internet.

Post the buy Musicfellas’ team would be connecting with Gaana.com’s team and one of the founders, Mayank would be joining as a developer to develop similar apps for the company, as reported by Nextbigwhat.

Gaana has been focussing a lot on social music discovery. The latest version of Gaana App and Web have deep social integration wherein users can discover new music through their social network. The platform also enables the artists, labels and bands harness the power of social by propagating quality music socially.

Indie music, which is music produced independently from commercial record labels, is a new trend across the country. The spurt in music festivals like Sunburn and NH7 Weekender coupled with the growing popularity of EDM concerts and TV shows (like Sound Trippin on MTV and Sound Trekking on Fox Traveller) indicate huge potential of the indie music scene.  Besides that independent music is a space which has potential simply because it is not as cluttered with Bollywood or pop music, areas which are already saturated.

Even Pepsi, is embarking on a co-branding initiative with Viacom’s youth and music platform, MTV, for a new Channel, that will focus on the indie genre, comprising independent artistes and bands, international artistes and English indie music.