We Indians love TikTok, the ultra-popular social media short-form video app where you dance for the bhangra or latest Bollywood mashups or get creative with a lip-synced versions of the song. Taking the music connection to the next level, China’s ByteDance the original owners of TikTok has come up with a full-scale music streaming service. Resso, the social music streaming service/app (as described by the company) has been officially launched in India.
Resso is more than your usual music streaming services like Gaana, Jio Saavn, Amazon Prime Music or Spotify, that adds a touch of social connectivity to it. Here the emphasis is to let you express and connect through the tracks. For example, while listening to a song you could interact with it in gifs, images, and videos (called Vibe which is genre-based). You could even upload your own videos, gifs or pictures and then share it with others in the community.
Most of the songs Resso is accompanied by synchronized lyrics. What makes it more interesting is that you could instantly capture your favourite lyric quote and then directly share to your Instagram Stories. Each song gets its own comment section where you could interact with like-minded music lovers. Of course, you could also create a playlist, share with your friends and get the Resso’s community talking about it.
Features Lookup
Looking at Resso’s music catalogue, we could find most of the popular tracks from Indian music labels like T-Series, Saregama, Times Music, Zee Music, YRF Music, Tips, Venus and Shemaroo. There are also tons of tracks from smaller publishers like Speed Records, Anand Audio, Lahiri Music, Divo and Muzik 247. When going international, it seems Resso was able to sign deals with big music labels like Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Merlin and Beggars Group. If you find some of your favourite music tracks missing, then it would be because the company was not able to strike a deal with record label Universal Music.
Some of you may have already started using Resso as it opened up for testing (in India and Indonesia) two months before. During this period the music streaming service has gathered an astonishing 500,000+ installs, even without any marketing.
Resso is available on both iOS devices (App Store) and Android devices (Google Play). It comes by default an ad-supported free tier with limited functionalities (like lower streaming quality, limited song search). While testing it seems ads are currently too less to disturb you’re listening (actually we didn’t hear or see any ads while using the app whole day).
Paid or premium subscription in Resso stars at Rs 99 per month on Android (Rs 119 for Apple iOS). There seems to be no quarterly or yearly plans to subscribe but comes with a 30-days free trial to test out each and every feature of the service. With a premium subscription, you get ad-free music listening, high-quality music streaming (256 kbps), unlimited offline downloads and ability to skip tracks. You also get to play any song with a premium subscription, which otherwise on free-tier is limited to playing a curated playlist like YouTube Music.