$1 bn merger of Jio Music, Saavn to create largest music streaming app

Mumbai, March 25: Reliance Jio has announced the merger of Jio Music with music streaming service Saavn to form a joint entity valued at about $1 billion. WIth an aim to build one of the largest streaming services in the world, Jio has vowed to invest $100 million in the merged firm.

While Saavn founders will retain their leadership roles, Reliance will own $104 mn stake in Saavn. The three co-founders of Saavn, Rishi Malhotra, Paramdeep Singh and Vinodh Bhat, will continue to lesd the the combined entity.

“The investment and combination of our music assets with Saavn underlines our commitment to further boost the digital ecosystem and provide unlimited digital entertainment services to consumers over a strong uninterrupted network,” Akash Ambani, director, Reliance Jio, said.

“We are delighted to announce this partnership with Saavn, and believe that their highly experienced management team will be instrumental in expanding Jio-Saavn to an extensive user base, thereby strengthening our leadership position in the Indian streaming market,” he added.

With a massive addressable market opportunity of over 1 billion users in India and globally, the combined entity plans to invest aggressively to accelerate growth that would benefit all aspects of the ecosystem, including users, music labels, artistes and advertisers.

The combined platform will also build on Saavn’s award-winning original programming and artist originals (AO), which has re-defined the development, marketing and distribution of original audio content.

JioMusic has been India’s fastest growing music streaming app for over 60 consecutive weeks. JioMusic has sourced content from all the major Indian and international labels and now has over 16 million HD songs across 20 languages.

Saavn, on the other hand, is the only streaming service to make top grossing app charts in multiple markets including India, US, UK, Canada, the UAE and Singapore among others.