Spotify sings on the struggle to convert Indian listeners into subscribers

The music streaming industry in India has reached a new level in the last few years. Players including Amazon Music and Spotify entered the industry a few years back. Local competitors like Gaana and JioSaavn have also introduced new features on their platforms in recent times to stay relevant against their global counterparts. The expansion of the industry has brought new local artists and podcast creators to the market. But, there is still a long way to go for the industry, as special guests on this week’s episode of the Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital – Gaana CEO Sandeep Lodha and Spotify Head of Market Operations in India Akshat Harbola – Orbital host Akhil Arora Tell to

Spotify entered the Indian market in February 2019 and is currently celebrating its three year journey in the country. The platform claims to have brought over 6,000 local artists on board over the past three years through its producer education program called Masterclasses.

Since its inception, Spotify He says that there has been a 13-fold increase in the number of Indian artists on its platform. The Stockholm, Sweden-headquartered streaming giant also has shows including EQUAL, RADAR and Fresh Minds to bring new artists from the country to its global audience.

Spotify also claims that the number of cities and towns in the country where it has streamed music has increased to more than 7,500 in 2021. Harbola tells us that English, Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu and Tamil are among the popular languages ​​in which music has been streamed through the platform so far.

Similar to Spotify, Lodha says Song It has seen growth in both audience and content. The Indian Forum will celebrate its 12th year later in 2022.

Lodha says that both the music and the podcast are the core of the song. He mentioned that the platform recently started giving suggestions to users based on their listening patterns to make the experience more personalized and engaging. This is a feature that its competitors have had for a long time. The personalization touch has helped increase user retention on the platform, says Lodha, without giving any specific number of details.

Growth aside, both Spotify and Gaana believe that India is an entirely different market for audio streaming in the US and other western markets. Harbola said: “India still records the highest rate of piracy in the world when it comes to music. So, here, the market we are dealing with is very different.”

One of the major challenges for platforms including Spotify and Gaana is persuading users to pay for their subscriptions. Many of their potential users are listening to music through youtube – If not through any pirated source.

Spotify is trying to persuade people to buy for its paid subscription through a pouch-pricing model called Premium Mini. introduced In December 2020, the premium Mini model comes with ad-free music streaming and the ability to download songs on a mobile device for Rs. 7 a day.

Harbola tells us that Spotify took the Premium Mini to markets including Indonesia after experimenting with India. However, he believes that a lot of research is yet to be done to increase the paid subscription in the Indian market.

Like Harbola, Lodha also believes that the market players, including Gaana, will have to find new ways to increase subscriptions in the country.

“I think over the next three, four years, as the economy develops, and you see it in developing economies that membership rates go up, because as industries get more mature, economies get more mature. are,” he says.

Having said that, both Harbola and Lodha tell us that the pay tier of music streaming platforms in the country has grown exponentially in the last few months as compared to the last two years.

The next big wave in the audio streaming world is coming from podcasts. But India is not as mature as compared to western markets including US and UK. Nevertheless, there are promising signs.

“We’re already seeing pretty decent traction, so one in four podcast listeners or Spotify listeners are listening to podcasts regularly, and Gen Z in particular,” Harbola says. “The youngest users are adopting new media in a new, very big way.”

Lodha explains that the choice of podcasts among his listeners is mostly based on their music listening preferences.

“We have a lot of people who listen to crypto or listen to autobiographical material,” he says. “And there’s a lot of people who will listen to, you know, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata, and, or romantic or horror stories.”

Platforms including Spotify and Gaana are also looking for ways to monetize creators to boost both the number and quality of podcasts in the country.

“We are moving into a more marketplace type of setting, like YouTube,” says Lodha.

Spotify has its own offering called Anchor that podcasters can use to distribute their podcasts to a variety of listening apps, including Spotify, as well as access tools like analytics. It lets podcasters monetize their podcasts with individual ads, podcast subscriptions, and regular donations from their listeners.

“There’s a chicken-and-egg situation out there,” underlines Harbola. “A lot of creators need monetization. There is no question in this. But at the same time, brands want audiences.”

We talk about them all in more detail – including the 2022 roadmap for both Spotify and Gaana. You can listen to all this and more by hitting the play button on the Spotify player above.

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