Who does this? Tips Music issued an odd statement last night dragging streaming service Gaana through the mud for not renewing its licensing arrangement with the label. Apparently the existing deal between the companies has fallen through and Tips's catalogue will no longer be available on Gaana. That's pretty much all the statement offers us by way of details. "During one of the worst crisis situation being faced by India & rest of the world it’s a sad & double whammy news for the millions of music lovers that India’s leading music app Gaana failed to renew its licensing deal with Tips and which has resulted in takedown of Tips’s content from the platform," the statement said. In a statement to MediaNama, Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal said, "Given the high cost of royalties and demands of exorbitant minimum guarantees (with no linkage to revenues of music OTT players) by Tips and their music catalogue's affinity with our customer base, it is not viable for us to pay them high royalties as demanded by them for their music on our platform. While we had the options of compulsory licensing and statutory licensing, we have currently taken a call not to go down that path to reduce our costs." (full statement below) Tips's catalogue includes Bollywood albums from the late '90s, with content from singers like Anu Malik and Ghulam Ali; the label also licenses rights to devotional songs. It's interesting that Tips is dangling the pandemic in front of Gaana to…
