Spotify, the most popular online music streaming, will launch in India, home to 1.3 billion people.
The company has already sealed deals with people in business and significant shareholders in India. Spotify is expected to launch their services in India in 2019.
Although the company hasn’t released any information about their plans, plenty of reports show that the company’s services will be available in the first quarter of that year.
Even though Spotify is the most profitable streaming company, it is only available in Europe, North and South America and some parts of Asia like the Philippines now. It is also limited in America, Europe, and Latin America. While the said countries are accountable for less than a third of the globe’s population, the Stockholm-based business still wants to target India.
Its expansion and plan go beyond just providing services to Indians but also luring customers from Japan, South Africa, and Israel, which are dubbed as the ‘rest of the world’ markets.
Spotify Technology has 8 million subscribers from the mentioned countries, and India can alter that figure. Indians can give them more profit. The streaming company has told business owners and investors their interests in launching in India, yet they didn’t commit to any timetable and gave comments about this plan.
Vivek Paul, a former employee of Sony Corp and a digital consultant in Mumbai, said that India is a high-growth place. It is why investors like to invest in the area.
Entice Investors
Aside from expanding its subscriber base, overcoming India’s market can help Spotify increase its value. the company’s stock has declined since its peak for 30 percent. It’s listing price has slipped. While the drop is because of technology stocks, many investors have been wary by the result. Shareholders are not confident about the company’s rate and value in the market.
Spotify has been planning to do business in India for some time now. It even hired an experienced communications consultant in the area.
Spotify’s India platform has faced several issues.
It all started when Spotify acquired songs from the musicians instead of recording labels. With this, significant companies expressed their sentiments to this company.
Despite the issues, Spotify continued to obtain rights. It may not have attained the approval of major labels, but it has gotten deals with some businesses.
According to Matthew Hannigan, Buckingham Research Group, doing business with India is excellent for supporting Daniel Ek’s ambition.
Fixed Disagreement
Bhusman Kumar, T-series’ managing director, confirmed that they are working with Spotify. He said in an interview that his company has a deal with the streaming business.
T-series operates all the videos and music in the globe and monitors the most-watched audio-visuals before they appear on any website.
On the other hand, Sony Music and other significant companies declined to give a statement.
Spotify is available in 13 territories in North Africa and the Middle East. But even so, the company wants to operate in India as the country has a large population compared to the mentioned countries.
But the question is how many Indians will be shelling out money for this streaming company. There are many streaming services in India, but not all of them are earning substantial profits.
It shows that out of 100 million subscribers in India, only a few want to pay for a service fee. The most used site in this country is YouTube, which offers different videos and songs without the fee.
Spotify will rely on its free services to attract people and convert them to consumers. After all, this strategy works in other countries.
Affordable Offer
The internet and many free online platforms affect paid streaming sites. Indians have access to technology, so they don’t pay attention to other services.
But Spotify is determined to lure customers from India. They aim to acquire Bollywood music rights as they are accountable for more than half of the country’s sales.
Several genres include pop, devotion and more. This is the reason many record labels reside in India, including SONY. Daniel Ek mentioned that India is full of local names and publishers.
Another issue that Spotify is facing is the searching habits of Bollywood fans. These people search songs by character and not by singers. However, the company is optimized to work based on artists and songs.
Many Indians don’t have bank accounts and credit cards as well. This is why the company is looking for alternative payments.
They need to partner to local operators to succeed. But the two operators in the area have owned music service. These are Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Reliance Jio.
Jio Music is the second most used online service in this country. It had 400 million songs and expanded into music and artists.