Strategies to quickly engage users include free services and the launch of lightweight applications for the Indian market.
The author of this article Sohini Mitter, original title: ‘We achieved 2 million active users in a month, among the top three players now’: Spotify India MD
Summary of Key Points
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Spotify The Indian market is booming, with only 2 million active users added in just one month, ranking the top three in the industry.
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The online phase pushes the free user experience and the lightweight app Spotify Lite for fast access to Indian users.
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The company’s long-term development goal is to create value for Indian users: integrating local music and international music resources such as sip music, tailored user services.
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Follow the business segment outside of music, original podcasts will be the next user growth point.
As early as a year ago, Spotify had spoken on his IPO roadshow, and India was the next big market. In February of this year, Spotify officially launched in India, the performance is a blockbuster: the first week of the online line attracted millions of users, more than 2 million active users in a month. The market’s “fast action”, which is advertised by Swedish streaming service providers, relies on its high brand awareness among Indian users.
After about half a year on the line, Spotify said that he has “stable in the top three” in the highly competitive streaming music service market in India. Given that less than 1% of 150 million domestic users pay for content, Spotify previously decided to launch free user services during the online phase. Not only that, but the company recently launched a standalone version of the app, Spotify Lite, designed to appeal to users with unstable network connections, low-end Android devices, or users who want to save on their phone’s memory. Spotify India Chief Operating Officer Amarjit Singh Batra said in an interview with YourStory: “We are ensuring that Indian users can enjoy music services more easily and conveniently.”
Batra also details Spotify IndiaThe development history of the division, the nuances in the local market, the competitive landscape of the industry, the growing demand for Punjabi music in India, and how Spotify will achieve its goal of improving its User loyalty and “improve the average spending of Indian users on music to international standards.
The following is an excerpt from the interview:
“Fast action” enters the Indian market
Q: Please tell us about the development history of Spotify India Branch so far, such as the growth of the company and the activity level of the user group?
A: Although we have not entered the Indian market for a long time, we have achieved good response in many aspects. This special market experience is very exciting. First, it’s the user’s love for us. From product launches to a series of marketing campaigns afterwards, we are honoured to have attracted a lot of users and artists and brands to participate in social media. User love and excitement about Spotify Let our platform attract millions of users within a week of online launch. Second, the Indian market is unique because of its social and cultural diversity. We have been investigating the music consumption behavior of Indian users. English pop music, Tamil and Telugu film music, Punjabi non-movie music and Hindi independent music all have exclusive fan bases. Finally, for a diverse and diverse country like India, we should continue to learn and explore how to localize our products.
Q: How is the user growing? How many paid users are there currently?
A: It’s the expectation of the Spotify brand that makes us quickly get on the platform. More than 2 million monthly active users in less than a month, I believe this number is still Will increase significantly over time. Our goal is to serve every music lover in India. In India, on average less than 1% of users pay for music content, and we are now above the industry average. In other words, our focus has not been on developing the number of users, but on creating value through user experience. We are here to develop the market and build a loyal user who belongs to Spotify.
Create value for users
Q: How do you plan to achieve this in the next 12-18 months? According to what you see, what measures can improve user usage?
A: India is a value-sensitive market where users will only be from playlists, personalization to payment options, brand marketing, etc. All aspects of the service experience for their own tailored are paid for. Although there are more than 150 million audio stream listeners nationwide, only 1% of them pay for music content. This shows that the Indian market has huge growth potential. Our focus is on building a musical spending habit, the goal is to raise the average consumption level of Indian users to the world level.
Q: Spotify India’s product pricing is clearly more competitive than its global products. Can you expect that there will be more price innovations now in the future for video streaming service providers like Netflix?
A: Users can listen to music and podcasts for free on Spotify. For the premium version, we have a flexible pricing strategy, providing a series of user subscription plans from one day to one year, price from 13 rupees (RMB 1.28) to 1189 rupees (RMB 117.25), as well as student plans. This ensures that our premium products are personalized and can be enjoyed by individual customer groups. We aim to create value for our partners and users.
Personalized localization is the core competency in the market competition
Q: What is the biggest opportunity for the Indian music streaming market now? How can you make yourself stand out from a market that already has more than a dozen competitors?
A: Piracy is the biggest obstacle to the current industry development, but at the same time it also provides an important opportunity to turn pirated music users into legitimate music streaming services . Since the launch, our users have been steadily growing their spending on music products. It is estimated that we are already the top three in the industry. At the beginning of the line, we foreseen this rapid growth and launched a free user service for this purpose. This type of user can listen to more than 50 million songs for free, manage and use more than 3 billion for different moods and times.Engage the personalized playlist and experience the most immersive service. In addition to this program, we also have powerful products designed to enhance the user’s audio sound experience. First of all, it is a personalized service based on artificial intelligence, which can bring a unique experience to each user. Second, it’s a unique playlist, not just a playlist of “genuine and mood.” We are breaking the traditional concept of music consumption by , encouraging users to find more appropriate content to create a community and enhance user identity.
Q: How do you localize your products in India?
A: In terms of localization, our focus is not only on songs. Our editorial team is fully aware of the diversity of Indian culture and has created more than 200 playlists for this purpose. In addition, we’ve also launched Spotify Lite to ensure that India’s users can enjoy music services more easily and easily, allowing more users to use low-end Android phones (its in India) If you have a large user base) and you have a bad network signal, you can listen to music without any trouble. Although it has not been a long time to enter the Indian market, we have already discovered our own value chain. The previous series of acquisitions also established our leading position among many players in the Indian music market. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Serve users of all ages, link local and international music
Q: What kind of people are you targeting? Are you positioning yourself as an advanced user, a service provider in a first-tier city? Still a service provider in the local music market yet to be integrated?
A: Our goal is to serve every music lover, from enjoying music to “friends”, from beginners who have just started a music journey to music enthusiasts. Our advertising campaigns have always been dedicated to connecting different audiences naturally.
Q: What is your content strategy? How to combine local and international music content? What content is it available to Indian users?
A: Our content has covered all language groups in India. In terms of content management, content based on 5-6 languages is usually selected for users, and the algorithm generates a playlist on the homepage according to the user’s entry settings and the consumed content. As far as local music is concerned, Bollywood is definitely the most listened to. But recently IWe note that the demand for Punjabi music continues to increase, comparable to Bollywood music. In addition, the discovery of new content, regional diversity and the emergence of local musicians have also boosted the popularity of Tollywood music, Kollywood music and independent music. Although local music consumption still dominates in India, we also see that the consumption of international music is also increasing, from K-Pop, Latin pop music, hip hop music and electronic dance music. It is becoming more and more popular. This is largely due to the Z-generation user base, who are open-minded and willing to explore new types of music.
Q: Is there a plan to open original music and podcasts in India?
A: In terms of original music, we have launched Spotify Singles. In fact, in the past few months, we have been paying more attention to the original podcast business. Now, the number of our podcast listeners has increased by 50% quarter-on-quarter. Podcasting, as a new way of telling storytelling, is growing steadily in India and becoming popular. For more mature markets, we invest in original blogs through our own Spotify Studios platform. Although India is still in its infancy in non-music audio, according to current consumer trends, India will have a lot to do in this global business opportunity in the coming years.
Edit | Guo Chen@出海
图 | Oriental IC
