Testing Resso

Like TikTok, the music streaming app uses social interactivity; unlike Spotify, it falls short in discovery

BILLBOARD ASKED CORRESPONDENTS in the three countries where Resso already operates — Brazil, India and Indonesia — to test-drive the app. The platform’s biggest difference from Spotify and other major music streaming services is its level of interactivity. Users can comment on a song and share it on social media including “lyric quotes” (with the ability to choose specific lines). They can also discover other people’s profiles through the comment section or from the list of those who liked the songs. User profiles have a picture, an “about me” and a cover image that can be personalized. It also displays a user’s music preferences, playlists, following and followers, and on Resso, users can follow and send messages to one another.

LYRIC INTEGRATION

By clicking “lyric feedback,” users can flag unsynchronized or wrong lyrics and add translations. When it debuted in 2019, Resso resembled TikTok in its ability to create and share “vibes” — a GIF, image or videoclip that automatically runs in the background when you stream a song — but the feature has since been removed.

DISAPPOINTING DISCOVERY

Resso is intuitive. Similar to TikTok, users swipe up and down to navigate between songs, which feels like the user is scrolling through a web article or navigating an endless stream of music content.

Instead of the preview, next, shuffle and repeat buttons that music players usually have, Resso displays time-synced lyrics. But its recommendation engine lacks consistency, and it falls short in music discovery compared with Spotify and YouTube. In India, streaming the latest Taylor Swift single produced a prompt of “similar to ‘Anti-Hero,’ ” but clicking on it took a user to a playlist of the most-played Englishlanguage hits in India. In Brazil, a “Classic Samba” playlist consisted of only 12 songs, some of which were not classics, while a “This Is Bahia” list generated 50 tracks. In Indonesia, initial recommendations turned up random Indonesian songs, some Japanese anime soundtracks, a lot of pop titles and remixes or covers by lesser-known artists.

NO IMPORT RESTRICTIONS

Resso can import playlists from over 10 other streaming services — including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube — through a partnership with the app TuneMyMusic. When users allow Resso access to their phone’s microphone, they unlock the function to identify songs based on surrounding sounds or other phone applications — a bit like having a built-in Shazam app.

NO SONY ARTISTS

The absence of the Sony Music catalog was noticeable in all three countries. In addition to zero catalog by Harry Styles (Columbia) and Meghan Trainor (Epic), Resso’s Top 50 playlist in India was missing the hit “Kesariya,” which was released by the label group; in Brazil, the Som Livre/Sony catalogs of several top sertanejo artists, including Marília Mendonça, are not available; and in Indonesia, P!nk’s “Just Give Me a Reason” (partly controlled by Sony Music Publishing) and The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather” (Columbia) were unavailable, with covers from lesser-known artists featured instead.

LOTS OF ADS

Resso’s monthly subscription tier is priced at about $1.45 in India, $3.19 in Brazil and $3.46 in Indonesia for the individual plan — about the same level as Spotify in India and slightly lower in Brazil and Indonesia. (Apple Music, at about $1.20 for an individual plan, is priced less in India.) The ad-supported free service in India is less user-friendly than Spotify’s version in all three countries. The number of ads per hour on Resso is higher than on Spotify, and users need to manually close ads in order for the next tune to stream. Free users are limited to 60 minutes of music per day, though watching a 15- to 20-second-long video ad unlocks an additional hour.