The newest brainchild of King Sing Interactive Entertainment Inc., Gaao is a karaoke app for the massive base of Bollywood music fans in India. What’s particularly impressive here is the extensive list of songs, latest tracks and artists in Gaao’s library. You also get tracks by legendary artists of yesteryear. Add to this, is the convenient UI of the app, and the neat, simple layout.
Presently available only on Android, the Gaao app presents a platform for you to record your voice layered over tracks, save to your device and/or upload to the platform. You can create your own page, sing along to tracks that are trending (labeled within the app as ‘Hot’), and get noticed by other users of the app. At present, Gaao has about 10,000 downloads on Google Play Store, and gives its users the option to share their crafty vocal work on Facebook and Twitter.
(L-R) Artist list, Gaao Recommended, Artist-specific song list
The app itself is very easy to use. Right after downloading, you can proceed to surfing for tracks and record your voice over it. The assisted karaoke is quite decent, and gives a cue for you to start singing, and the words that accompany the music. Post-recording, you can choose to delay/forward your voice, too. All of this can be done even before logging in. You need to log in if you intend to share your recording on the app, or on your socials. What’s good is that the app does not force you to log in, and in case you do not intend to spread out your music, you can easily continue without creating an account here.
The layout is also easy to understand. There are five tabs, where the first one (depicted by an uncannily Tinder-ish logo) are the hot tracks recorded by fellow Gaao users. The second tab is a ‘You May Like’ list, which lists out tracks recommended by the app for you to listen to. The middle tab, depicted by Gaao’s own logo, is where you discover Gaao’s karaoke library, which has sub-tabs to facilitate discovery. The ‘Top Songs’ list has the tracks that are being sung along to by most, while the other three are Singers, Library and Local Audio. You get an alphabetically-arranged list of singers, and the list is quite extensive. The Library tab will list the tracks that you have chosen to sing along to, while Local Audio will show you a list of tracks that you have sung and saved to your device. The fourth major tab will show you messages, and you can chat with fellow singers and/or respond to your listeners. The fifth is your profile tab, which you can easily set up by syncing with your Facebook/Twitter account.
(L-R) Old artist variety, Best of Gaao users, Songs played already
Overall, Gaao has the potential to be an essential at all-night house parties. With a simple layout, it is neat, tidy, intuitive, and presents an extensive database of tracks to sing along to. However, be prepared to have a lot of data and a fast connection at hand, as Gaao takes quite some time to load the apps, even on a steady, fast internet connection. There is also scope to improve artist search based on other song parameters as genres, eras, etc. Gaao also has tracks based on other genres, although Bollywood songs overshadow those.