Spotify Banks On Localisation, Podcasts To Boost Growth In India

Spotify Technology SA said it is banking on localisation and podcasts to drive growth in India’s crowded music streaming market.

The world’s largest music streaming platform had rolled out its service in the country of 1.3 billion people earlier this year.

The Stockholm-based company said it aims to do a lot of customisation to on-board new users on the platform, especially first-time users. “In the next months we will be going behind them and will make more localisation and investment in products,” Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director at Spotify India, told BloombergQuint in an interview. The company already has more than 200 editorially-curated playlists in India across some of the most popular languages, he said.

The firm is also banking on podcasts to boost music consumption. “With podcasts what we have seen globally is that the more they listen to podcasts, the more they listen to music,” Batra said. “India is a long-term market for Spotify.”

The music streaming giant said it has nearly 2 million monthly active customers on the platform and adds 30,000-40,000 songs every day.

Batra said the biggest challenge in India is that it is an under-penetrated market. “People spend an hour on music streaming services in a month in India, against an hour a day in other markets globally,” he said, adding that it is not easy to increase the country’s average.

According to a report by Deloitte, less than 1 percent of Indian subscribers pay for music.

Batra, however, is hopeful. If the engagement is increased, getting users to pay will no longer be a “difficult nut to crack”, he said.

Spotify not only competes with its global peers like Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Prime Music in India, but also goes head-on against domestic players such as JioSaavn, Airtel Wynk, Gaana, among others.

Watch | MD Amarjit Singh Batra on Spotify’s India strategy