In conversation with Sabirul Haque, CEO of Shadhin Music

Sabirul Haque is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record, having worked extensively with Asian and European telcos and is a pioneer in the Value Added Services (VAS) industry in emerging markets.

He founded Shadhin Music, an application which won the "BASIS and ICT National Champion Award 2020" in the 'Consumer' category. This Month, Shadhin Music was also selected from iDEA project, ICT Bangladesh for pre-seed funding.

Launched in 2019, the platform now boasts 1.6 million registered users over 195 countries.

When did you first conceive Shadhin Music? What were your thoughts behind the initiative?

In 2019, we decided that we would build a music-streaming platform, dedicated to helping music streaming in Bangladesh grow.

We believed that it was about time, and our assumptions about the market was firmly based in reality, In 2018, 4G was introduced to our market, and since then there has been almost a 50% growth in internet users.

Internet usage went from 42% to over 70% in less than 3 years. About half the adult population is now using social media, roughly 32 million people are watching videos on YouTube, And 24% of those are looking for music. Our music industry regularly faces challenges like piracy, proper royalty distribution and lack of proper music Bengali content-oriented music streaming application.

Before launching Shadhin, I helped deliver music-streaming solutions for GP Music, Splash, and Vibe – now my indirect competitors. Shadhin Music is a personalised, streamlined solution for music streaming, which grew under my vision.

How would you say Shadhin Music differentiates itself from other apps?

In my opinion, it has unparalleled content strength and innovation. Shadhin Music not only offers the biggest Bangladeshi catalogue, but the same time, our focus is to satisfy our users through our innovative features.

We offering content beyond music -- Shadhin Music offers the user free access of entire catalogue, an attractive premium plan with ad-free experience, exclusive podcasts, offline downloads, playlist creation and more. We are offering our premium version through multiple billing options which include Bkash, Grameenphone, Robi, Airtel, Banglalink, along with MFS and credit cards.

Does the emergence of Spotify hinder local streaming apps?

I think it will help Shadhin Music to grow more. The platform will also help our user to get habituated to streaming music. Our vision for next 5 years is to become most loved Bangla music streaming application and become the regional champions. I think Spotify's launch in Bangladesh not only help us, but also our music industry and artist fraternity as well.

How popular is streaming among listeners today?

I would say that the market is still in its early stages, but in the next two to three years, we will see massive growth in all streaming platforms. 500 million tracks played in Shadhin music within 12 months clearly shows that listeners are already moving towards this method of listening to music.