Saavn Adds 800,000 English Songs to Catalogue With Warner and EMI Deal

South Asian Audio Video Network (Saavn) on Saturday announced the addition of 800,000 English songs in partnership with two more Western labels - Warner Music and EMI - for users in India.

The partnership with Warner and EMI makes Saavn's catalogue jump up from 1.1 million songs to nearly 2 million, already including content from other major Western labels, Sony and Universal.

Saavn says that its music app users in India will now be able to stream tracks by everyone from The Grateful Dead to Madonna to LCD Soundsystem.

"India continues to be the largest music listening population in the world, and we'll continue to invest in bringing the best music streaming experience to our users. Adding Warner and EMI to our catalog is another major milestone," said Rishi Malhotra, CEO, Saavn.

The music streaming company has also announced a shift in its executive leadership structure by appointing former President Rishi Malhotra as the new CEO for Saavn, while current CEO Vinodh Bhat will now take on the new role of President and Chief Strategy Officer.

"As we enter the next phase of consumer-facing growth, I am excited about Rishi's unique combination of strong leadership, hands-on management, and product focus in the CEO role. As one of HBO's youngest senior executives several years ago, he built a $100 million business for their multi-platform group, and many of those same skills continue to help Saavn achieve even greater heights," said, Vinodh Bhat.

The press release announcing the shift in leadership and new label partnerships also mentioned that Saavn will be rolling-out a suite of new consumer-facing products and partnerships in the coming months, aimed at increasing visibility and exploring new market opportunities with the "1 billion-plus Indian mobile users around the world".

In May, Saavn had revamped its Android app, updating it to version 3.0, adding a tiled interface to the app's home screen and more. The company had said that it developed the latest update in collaboration with Google's Android team.

Saavn had launched a revamped version of its iOS app in April, following which it said the number of overall unique users of the app rose by 10 percent.