The Production Life cycle of Music streaming services in India
INTRODUCTION
Music Streaming services were never part of Indian’s Ecosystem of apps until 2016 with the boom in the smartphone market and Cheap data plans which have made it possible and now this market is expected to rise from here.
The Current market of Music streaming service (MSS) is $ 150 million and it is expected to grow at the rate of 40% to reach $ 400 million by 2023. As the charts depict the growth in the market.
In each of the models, there is a free version and there is a subscription model usually costing under 100 Rs monthly. The companies in this domain pay the music labels a fee to promote the songs on their platform, they also pay fees to the individual artist. The labels get recorded and it is published on respective platforms.
Every Opportunity beckons company to cash in as so has been the case.
Following are the major players in MSS in India
- Jio saavn
- Gaana
- Youtube Music
- Spotify
- Wynk Music
- Apple music
- Amazon Music
Today we’ll talk about the product life cycle of MSS (Music streaming service) in India
Where does it lie in the product adoption curve?
Lets first look at the different stages of the Product adoption curve.
- Innovators
- Early Adopters
- Early Majority
- Late Majority
- Laggards
According to me, the Majority of the users would fall under the first 3 stages of the Product adoption curve. However, let’s do the profiling of each of the above segments.
Profiles of adopters — (early adopters, early majority and so on)
- Innovators — Innovators under MSS are those who are frenzy with music and won’t mind paying the subscription for the full year. The brand that would do better marketing will take the slice over here.
- Early Adopters — Early adopters under MSS would be those who would go for Monthly subscription and might be interested in trying various platforms every month to see which works best for their taste. Price can also be a factor for them as they will stick with the platform which offers less price initially before jumping on to a yearly plan.
- Early Majority- Over here, the reviews of early innovators and Early adopters would be very important before going for a yearly/ monthly plan. These segments are bound to be more loyal as they get reviews from trusted sources. Feedback from this segment will avoid CHASM in the life cycle.
- Late Majority- People here might wait for the more in-depth analysis, and may even look ways for getting the premium services of the product as cheap as possible (Offers, Coupons, Rooting the device, etc).They will form the majority of users in MSS.
- Laggards- These people may not find value in Investing in the paid version irrespective of the price, they will be content in using the free version using their mobile data. They will, however, use the premium version only if it is free or when they feel its reasonable to invest.
Factors and challenges which affect the rate of music streaming service adoption.
- Price- In Market like India, the price would always be a very big factor Take the instance of Gaana.com, The pricing is about 99 INR /Month, still it has single digit percentage of paid users among 100 million active subscribers.
- Adoption to technology- Any new technology does take time especially in MSS which may not play a major role in common man’s life in India. So the willingness to adapt to such technology may not be high. People will prefer YouTube free services over MSS as it is traditionally used as well as it has better such search results to your queries. Sometimes it is a task to find a song on MSS, unlike Youtube.
- Smartphone penetration — This is very obvious as the majority of users would prefer to play their favorite music on smartphones rather than desktop. India has shown tremendous growth in this sector but it still has a long way to go.
- Internet penetration — Such streaming services require ample of data and that too quality in strength. People in India still use 2g (58% of them) and it is very difficult to stream music under the impact of buffering. A lite version (Like PUBG lite) of such services can considerably reduce the involvement of infrastructure.
- User Interface — I challenge you to search your favorite song on MSS over Youtube. While the later is simply a Broadcasting platform, it has made sure that the suggestion in the search can take approximate guesses and still give correct search result. While the MSS platform still struggles on this front making users go to Youtube first. Also, Less-educated users would take time to the clutter of songs this product has to offer on the home screen.
- Multi-lingual Nature- With India being a multicultural country, it is important to upload songs that have cultural value to the locals. For instance, Many south Indians may prefer songs in their regional language and not in Hindi and it is very difficult to get all the songs from the different county under one domain.
Growth and product adoption comparison with other music streaming services
This Industry has shown tremendous improvement in the past 4 years and it is expected to grow from here. While every new platform has some competitors to contain, MSS is no different.
The following Competitors have already dominated the space.
- Radio
- Music videos through YouTube
- Music on Television
- Downloading music on Laptop, Desktop
- Music consumption through Digital Devices
- Using Music players like Walkman, Disc man
Now let’s look at how People over the years have accepted these services
- Radio — A free service that can be found on every smartphone, cars, trains and is the most primitive way of consuming music online, It does not require the internet and even a feature phone will have a radio app pre-installed. However, Nowadays Radio listening is limited to people traveling via vehicle and not many prefer it listening on their Mobile phones.
- Video music — Here, the prominent player is YouTube. It is easy to use and its AI recommendation helps in playing your favorite song without much hassle. The best platform to search a song by miles and also has the most consolidated library of music in all Possible language. The probability of you not finding a song on YouTube is as slim as humans finding aliens. Youtube App, however, requires a strong internet connection, It is bound to buffer on 2G but will work fine on 3G and so on.
- Music on television- The most common way Indians start their holidays might be listening to Music on TV especially within the age of 15–26. It does not require Internet but consumers has no control over playlist and songs which they would be listening too. It will, however, continue to attract users without a smartphone (About 60% of India’s population uses feature phone).
- Using Digital Services- The most popular product under Digital devices which is working well currently would be Saregama caravan. All users have to do is pay a one time cost and they can listen to all the preinstalled songs. It has limitations and cannot accept more songs while MP3 players like iPod, Ipad does allow users to include more songs but the process is very tedious.
- Using CD/Castes — When did you last saw someone using walkman, Discman for listening to music? Walkman, Discman were once very popular, We all had those Big systems which accepted cassettes and CDs. Now it is obsolete to find one. It has Limitations in terms of space and cassettes and CDs are very fragile as well.
- Downloading Song — Gone are those days when people used to download songs from sites like Songs.pk. They brought Virus along with the songs but were the only source to install at one point. It was taxing to download each and every song. So Thankfully we have MSS now to replace them.
Platform
Growth hacks used
Digital Marketing is at the forefront of growth hacking nowadays and MSS is no different from it, so let’s see how these companies attract their users,
- Paid Marketing — Facebook /Google marketing has been used a lot for audience attraction by all these platforms. Running creative ads to engage users, Running offers and for all these campaigns, online marketing can be cost effective and handy.
- Influencer marketing — Actor like Nucleya, Ranbir Kapoor Marketing about Saavn has created a lot of impact on the brand building of the platform. The power of Influencer Marketing is often underestimated but in fact it the most preferred tools Nowadays.
3.) Search Engine Optimization — Attached Images show how power of Organic traffic can be used even if your service is app oriented, SEO and ASO (App store optimization )will continue to be prominent part to attract paid users.
4.) Social Media — All the big platforms has Good amount of organic reach and it comes no surprise to use it to their advantage for promotion. Following table will tell you the story of the topmost platform and the followers they have accumulated on social media.
Platform & Followers
Saavn
Twitter — 293k
Facebook -308k
Instagram -240k
Gaana
Twitter -365k
Facebook -500k
Instagram -202k
Summary:
I thereby conclude the following things
- MSS is growing and probably would be the primary way of consumption in India for music.
- Like with every product, it is very important to give enough time for users to adapt to it and this being a relatively new concept, the time taken to reach majority will always be there
- As the industry grows, foreign / Local competition is bound to grow and quality and how easy is to use a particular service will determine the market leader
- Other forms of Services is bound to shrink as justified above.
- It is very important for all the players to understand the user adoption cycle to avoid chasm.
- Factors affecting the growth also needs to be identified as the competition is stiff and will only grow from here
- Improving user experience has to be on the top priority for every one of Service providers, be it easy search or providing lyrics or song in variety of language.
It would be interesting to see the industry grow and as a consumer, we have the best seat in the house, so grab your popcorn for the exciting times ahead. Thank-you.
