Music is food for the soul. How many of you remember a song and the exact time when you first heard it?
Be it the first time you fell in love or a road trip with friends, and even the wedding dholkis, many of us here know that music occupies a unique place in our lives.
Now before we bore you with a snooze fest of a post, it’s time to put on your headphones or crank up your speakers and hit up one of these websites to listen to your fill of desi beats.
Patari is a project that has undoubtedly made valuable contributions to the music scene in Pakistan. It is the most social-media savvy music streaming website in Pakistan today, but that’s not its only claim to fame.
The Pakistani-owned music website is also at the forefront of promoting undiscovered artists, with them regularly featuring tracks by the best musical talent that Pakistan has to offer. Oh, and lest we forget, they also do expertly curate music playlists and mobile apps, both of which make me the Pakistani answer to Spotify.
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Comparison of the two Music apps
Interface
Patari and Taazi both apps are beautifully crafted with Material Design in mind and packed with some extraordinary powerful features. You can quickly search through all your music files with the enhanced Folder view. Patari though has more cleaner interface with good user experience. Taazi lacks consistency in design throughout different product offerings, be it the mobile app or different versions of web app (taazi.com vs v1.taazi.com). Looking at the two apps, Patari gives the feeling of lighter version of Spotify while Taazi gives that of Grooveshark, which is now dead.
Music Catalog
Browse and play music by albums, artists, songs, playlists, Patari Originals and different language and mood categories on Patari. While on Taazi, again a vast database is present which it includes top hit songs, artists, tv series, and movies as well are present. Massive collection of Pakistani songs is available to listen on Taazi.
Podcasts
Patari Podcasts are a weekly podcast about Pakistani affairs and phenomena run by users of Pakistan on Reddit. Whereas Taazi has podcasts related to song videos done by the random public. Really a good collection to listen to. Patari though has more focussed approach to delivering the content, whereas Taazi lacks to curate the content properly.
Offline Playback
In case of Patari, yes; one can listen to the music when you are offline after downloading your songs and albums to save data. On the other hand, Taazi does also have offline streaming with limited access. Both apps have this feature, but it’s a premium feature for which you have to pay.
Collections & Playlists
In both apps, you can make your own playlists, play a collection at once or add individual songs in queue. But when it comes to playing a collection, the user experience is much natural and smooth in Patari. The songs are added automatically into your playlist. Whereas, on Taazi the behavior is sort of same but not clear enough from UX point of view. Once you play a collection, the songs are added in the queue, but you cannot see the queue anywhere. Queue and playlists management is much superior in Patari.
Premium Accounts
The good thing about Patari is after signing up into the premium account, you can download and save songs in the app and listen to them offline for free. As compared to Taazi, credits are supposed to be added into your account. 10 credits per song download. You can earn 20 credits by simply joining Taazi.com. You can also earn 20 credits on inviting on Taazi. When you spend money in purchasing legal music on the app, Taazi awards credits into your account automatically.
Lyrics
Lyrics is something where alot of RnD is involved. Both apps don’t have the feature to show the lyrics on any of web or mobile apps. One way is to provision it from another provider of lyrics and show them in the app. This is something where both apps can innovate.
Ads Banners
Good thing is – both apps are not heavily loaded with ads. Still, if you upgrade to the premium account on Patari, then your app is ads free. Taazi app and website also dont contain ads for that matter. Paid subscription is good for the music industry, just saying!
Repeat and Shuffle Buttons
Both apps have the facility of repeat and shuffle songs in a queue. The feature makes the user experience much better.
Song Languages
On Patari, one can listen to songs in all our four provincial lanaguages, i.e., Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, and Balochi which is a unique feature of Patari. However, Taazi has Coke Studio, Pop, Rock, Folk, Pushto, Punjabi, Classical and Film categories in its app or website. Also, it has weekly latest charts available.
Service Availability
Patari and Taazi are both Pakistani music apps, but you can download and use it anywhere in the world. It’s available worldwide as Pakistani music lovers are living in all over the world.
Featured Artists
On Patari, there are many underground bands producing cover music in the country and that too of very high quality. Moreover, music doesn’t work like films which you can see one time and then, you’re done with it. People used to listen to the same playlists for months. The truth which shouldn’t be ignored is that in the recent years, Pakistan’s music industry has boiled down to Coke Studio and Nescafe Basement, new music is not being produced here at a high rate. It is not just about promoting new artists. We also want to encourage established artists to create new content on a more regular basis.
Taazi, promotes established artists and also new artists on its site and app. New artists can upload their songs in MP3 files and can earn as soon as their song is published and downloaded by the audience.
Final words…
As a keen music listener, we are thrilled that we finally have a vast database of Pakistani music at one place amidst all those ad-stricken ugly and spam websites. On the other hand, I can see that both teams will have to work hard to fight against piracy & ‘mufta culture’. Patari and Taazi are legal apps, so listen to the music and enjoy!