Looks like Web18 owned internet portal In.com, has launched a new streaming music site at In.com/mplayer, allowing users to listen to songs across multiple genres and languages.
Homepage: Like its competitor Gaana.com*, it appears that the site has been built with HTML5. The homepage features a sliding carousel of all the latest music albums on the top followed by a list of top 10 latest songs. There is a sidebar on the right which allows users to browse through various sections – All Songs, Artists, Albums, Playlists, Radio, Countdown and so on. There is also a keyword based search box that allows users to search for their favorite song, album or artist.
Similar to Gaana.com, In.com’s music site offers 9 different background themes for the player and users can either login by creating an In.com account or through their Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Google accounts. The company says that users can use the same accounts to login to their other properties like IBNLive.com, Tech2.com, Moneycontrol.com and so on.
Music Player: There is a flash-based (Adobe Flash) music player on the right which indicates the current playing song and offers controls to play, pause, forward, repeat, shuffle, increase/decrease volume or to go to any specific portion of the song. It also allows users to like or dislike songs and offers song recommendations through a ‘You May Like’ tab within the player. One interesting thing worth noting is that the player is always present at the right side of the scree irrespective of how the user navigates the website. We also like the chrome finish look of the controls in the player.
Songs: Expectedly, the site seems to be currently focussed on offering the latest Bollywood songs, however, it also offers songs across various genres like Sufi, Carols, Folk, Rap, Ghazals, Qawwali, Jazz, Rock and languages like Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi and so on.
At the time of writing this article we weren’t able to find out how many albums the portal offered since it limits users to view only the top 100 albums in each genre or the ‘All Albums’ section. In comparison, Gaana.com, its competitor offers an infinite scroll in its Albums section. We wonder why In.com limits users to view only 100 albums in the ‘All albums’ section.
Social Integration: We noticed that the social sharing buttons are hidden in a pop up menu that appears when you hover over the song name, rather than being displayed upfront. Also there are less actionable items on the songs. Users can either add the song to a playlist, share it across Facebook, Twitter, Email or add it to their favourites.
It’s worth noting that In.com currently doesn’t offer an Facebook open graph app considering that several of its competitors including Dhingana, Saavn and Gaana already offer open graph apps on Facebook. For the uninitiated, Facebook open graph apps allows users to share the music they are listening to with their Facebook friends in realtime. In March 2012, Saavn had claimed that it had gained over 2 million Facebook-connected users through its open graph app and the company had generated over 1 billion Facebook impressions since launch, with content being published on Facebook every five seconds.
Artiste Radio Integration: In August 2011, In.com had launched Artiste Radio, a set of 10 live internet radio stations dedicated to Indian artists, featuring songs sung by or picturised on artists such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Kishore Kumar, Rajnikant, Madhuri Dixit, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Chiranjeevi and Kareena Kapoor, in addition to interviews, anecdotes and trivia. It looks like In.com has now integrated this radio service within the Radio tab on the portal.
Two Music Players? In.com already has an online music streaming at In.com/music which allows users to play songs and videos across various genres like pop, Indi-Pop, Dance, Devotional, Instrumental among others. We feel that In.com might integrate this music destination to the new music player as well.
Competitors: Interestingly, Indiatimes CEO Rishi Khiani doesn’t appear to like the fact that there are a lot of similarities between Gaana and In.com’s new site. In a recent tweet, he said that the player was a rip-off of Gaana.
imitation is a form of flattery but IN . Coms music player is a blatant rip off of gaana , sad to see innovation dead at web18
— rishi khiani (@urbaneye) May 30, 2012
Khiani was previously the COO at Web18. In.com’s new music player will compete with existing players like Dhingana which had recently claimed to have 10.5 million users, Saavn which had claimed to have 9.3 million users, Indiatimes’s Gaana.com and Rediff Songbuzz.
Disclosure: Indiatimes which operates Gaana.com is an advertiser with Medianama
