Spotify Music Streaming Service Launches in India

Music streaming service Spotify has officially launched in India, following the company’s recent expansion across MENA and South East Asia. With this Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE: SPOT) is now present in 79 markets with 207m users, including 96m subscribers, globally.

The Spotify app available to download for free or with an upgrade to Spotify Premium for INR 119 per month.

“As Spotify grows, our goal is to bring millions of artists and billions of fans together from every country and background,” said Daniel Ek, Spotify founder and CEO. “India has an incredibly rich music culture and to best serve this market, we’re launching a custom-built experience. Not only will Spotify bring Indian artists to the world, we’ll also bring the world’s music to fans across India. Spotify’s music family just got a whole lot bigger.”

“Spotify’s arrival in India is a big step forward in our overall global growth strategy. A fundamental piece of that strategy is staying connected to global culture while allowing room for local adaptation, and we’ve certainly achieved that with our India launch,” said Cecilia Qvist, Spotify’s Global Head of Markets. “We’ve worked closely with local teams of musicians, creators and cultural tastemakers to ensure Spotify is going to be loved, used and favored by people all over India whether they’re listening to local Bollywood and Punjabi hits, or discovering curated global playlists of K-pop or Reggaeton.”

Spotify has redesigned the music experience for India:

• Multi-language music recommendations: With many Indians speaking several local languages, Spotify’s music recommendation engine can now be tuned to Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. Indian users can select their preferred language(s) to receive tailored Daily Mix, Home, Radio, Search results and recommendations.
• Spotify Free with total control: For the first time on Spotify Free, smartphone users can play every song on demand.
• Playlists made for India:Curated and regularly updated by a team of Indian music experts, new playlists include Indiestan, Rap91, Namaste Love, Punjabi101, Bollywood Butter, Top Hits in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu andPunjabi. These sit alongside our celebrated international playlists including Mint, RapCaviar, Viva Latino and the This is… artist compilations.
• Spotify goes to the movies:Introducing Starring…, a series of playlists featuring music from the popular Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, and Punjabi actors.
• City playlists: New algorithmic playlists tracking what’s trending in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

“With today’s launch in the world’s second most populous country (over 1.3bn people), Spotify is making its way to the fastest growing market globally for mobile apps. The number of active internet users in India is estimated at over 400m, as mobile internet and smartphones become faster and more affordable,” read a communiqué from the company.