Indian music streamers are spoiled with choice, with close to a dozen global and home-grown players scrambling for their attention. That’s in a market where only a fraction of the user base likes paying for their music—the precise reason why Spotify introduced a more robust free tier in India. Eyeing the untapped market segment, Resso has become the latest app to join the list following a brief beta run. The new service comes from China-based ByteDance, whose TikTok app recently rose to immense popularity in the south Asian country.

For the most part, Resso functions just like your other music streaming services, but differentiates itself on a few points. The emphasis here is on sharing what you’re listening to, and for doing that, there are quite a few features baked right in. For example, the share section has pre-prepared lyrics cards that you can directly share to your Instagram Stories. Each song is accompanied by genre-based, vertical video called Vibe playing in the background — users can manually pick from a selected few options or download new ones from Resso’s online catalog.

Left: The player screen with the Vibe video. Center: The share screen with lyrics cards. Right: Sign-up freebie.

The lyrics section appears over most songs, and you can expand it to see the full text or report if something is off, while each song also gets its own comment section. Notably, Resso lacks the ability to cast to connected speakers, at least in the current state. Another thing it misses is a long list of artists under Universal Music’s banner, as ByteDance couldn’t strike a deal with the record label in time for Resso’s release. Part of the reason, TechCrunch speculates, is Universal’s Chinese investor Tencent, which rivals ByteDance in its home market.

Resso began its test phase both in India and Indonesia simultaneously, but only the former is getting the full service right now with a music selection tailored to the local palate, while those in Indonesia will have to wait a little longer. In addition to an ad-supported tier with limited functionalities, the music streaming app also offers paid subscription, which costs ₹99 ($1.36) per month on Android, while iOS users will have to cough up ₹119 ($1.63) for the same plan. Resso is also giving away a week’s worth of free trial when you sign up for the service.

Source: Resso, TechCrunch