Spotify competed with other platforms such as YouTube and pirated music when it first entered the Indian market 4 years ago. Nonetheless, Spotify India has expanded to 7,500 towns and cities in just four years because of the Indian market’s willingness to accept novel products and services and its ability to absorb their lessons.
The head of sales for Spotify India, Arjun Kolady, and the head of strategy and operations, Akshat Harbola, discussed the company’s four years in India and how the budget-conscious Indian market is willing to pay in an exclusive interview with Business Insider India.
Everything related to Spotify’s Background in India!
In the past four years, Harbola, who is interestingly one of Spotify India’s first employees, has observed the company grow its customer base, brand awareness, and team size evolving, as he puts it, from a niche global brand popular only among tech enthusiasts and people who discovered Spotify while travelling abroad to a local music player.
With regard to paying consumers, India is comparable to other emerging markets, but what makes it unique, according to Kolady, is the prevalence of consumption on mobile and the variety of languages that people speak. According to the music streaming giant, Punjabi pop and film music are both well-liked outsides of India. Popular musicians in these genres include Arijit Singh and AR Rahman. There are 184 nations where the platform is accessible.
Ads and subscriptions are Spotify’s two sources of income. It goes without saying that consumers who are used to bypassing advertisements don’t always appreciate the ones that appear on Spotify in between songs. And yet, Spotify India ranks among the quickest, if not the fastest growing ads revenue for Spotify in the world as per Kolady. Now working with 300 brands, Spotify India had to start from scratch when it entered the country and create the audio advertising ecosystem, according to Kolady.
Only radio was available for audio advertising in India. In contrast to a developed industry like the radio business in the US which was ripe for digitalization, radio marketing in India is less than 1% of the overall media spend,” according to Kolady.
While there will always be customers who favour the free product, the aim is also on developing the premium market, according to Kolady. Spotify India’s growth trajectory for the advertisement business parallels the growth trajectory of its customer base. Spotify India used a three-level strategy to develop habits, solve hurdles, and have an adaptive playbook for its other revenue stream, premium or subscriptions, according to Harbola.
According to Harbola, “forming habits” refers to creating a compelling free-tier experience that encourages users to select premium. Barriers can be removed by offering well-liked payment options and having third parties advertise the business to their users.
Often referred to as an adaptive playbook, premium plans are continually experimented with in accordance with markets and people. The music streaming giant offers premium mini in emerging nations like India, Indonesia, and others in addition to the four standard premium plans. Premium mini is now available in India for ₹7 per day and ₹25 per week, down from ₹13 per day and ₹39 per week in 2019.
The individual monthly subscription is the least expensive in India, costing just ₹119 per month, despite the plans’ understandably varying prices between markets. In contrast, it is accessible in the United States for $9.99 each month, or roughly $824. The number of subscriptions in India has increased tenfold since 2019 despite the fact that the bulk of their consumers is still using the free tier, according to Spotify India.
