As a part of our #Outlook15 series, we asked heads of online music companies about their focus areas for 2015, and the challenges that the online music ecosystem needs to address in 2015. We got responses from Gaana, OK Listen, Believe Digital. Gaana is a music streaming service, OK Listen is an online music store focused on independent music, and Believe Digital is an aggregator. In case you're a digital music company that wishes to share its answers to the questions below, we'd be happy to update. What according to you were the top developments and roadblocks in 2014 for the online music industry? What made a difference to your business and how? Pawan Agarwal, Gaana - We’re seeing 2-3x the consumption we saw 1 year ago. - We also saw all major labels offering content across web and mobile. This was a critical step towards players making a compelling, complete offering to consumers. - We still need effective ways to let users pay for things easily. We see consumer interest in our paid offering, but there are multiple steps needed to get there, which limits consumption. - Piracy is also a major problem, but we're seeing consumers switch from pirated means of consumption to services like Gaana, which is great. Vijay Basrur, OK Listen -We've seen the demand for independent music rise in 2014, much more since our launch in 2012. It also helps that quite a few independent musicians are also singing in Bollywood movies. We are seeing a rise…
