Battle of the Indian Music Streaming Services
Gunjan Kalita
Global Marketing Manager - Digital and Partner Ecosystem at Birlasoft | Go-to guy for Go-To-Market execution
On Feb 26 2019, Spotify launched its services in India without the fireworks associated with a launch-event. They knew that the anticipation was always there and once the word goes around, they just had to sit back and wait.
And within a week, Spotify crossed a million users in India!
Music streaming is a popular choice among the Indian crowd thanks to the unlimited data plans and it helps keep the phone storage clear.
Spotify used a pricing strategy keeping the Indian market in consideration. Here’s a comparison of their prices in different countries:
We obviously have to consider the song database size as well, which differs from market to market – but for now the Swedish company is doing a decent job to get the masses.
Youtube Music – the new “Kid” in the Block
Youtube Music and Youtube Premium launched today in a similarly hushed manner. Youtube Music gets directly into a fierce competition in the growing Indian music streaming market.
Keeping into perspective the major players in this segment, we can see that Youtube Music enters at a very competitive rate which is similar to Gaana and Jio Saavn
The Big Picture
The Indian music streaming market is popping up with a lot of global as well as local players. 3 considerations that come into play are:
- Price - Premium plans are still a niche and more common among the Urban youth. Almost all services offer free access - minus the option to download and playing ad-free music. This definitely won't bother a good chunk of the crowd.
- Ease of use and UI - Services with good analytics to present curated playlists strike brownie points with their users. A good UI has been a 'make-or-break' for music players across decades and this too shall be a factor that tips the scales in the favor of some rather than most.
- Ecosystem - An Apple user with his/her iPhone, iPad and an iCloud account would prefer the Apple Music as it fits seamlessly into their ecosystem. Similarly, users who rely on their Amazon Echo devices for smart home automation would automatically be drawn to the Amazon counterpart.
The battle is heating up with each provider competing to get a fair chunk in this space. For us consumers, it can only be a good sign of times to come.
Director - Marketing & Sales @ Magic EdTech | B2B Marketing | Branding & Marketing | Nurturing Communities | In Pursuit of Excellence
5yYeah. I'd go for curating playlists as the most important one. Plus, the next move could be integration with music discovery apps like Shazam and SoundHound. I'd like my music streaming app to be able to add songs like the one that was playing at a pub that I really liked.