Product Adoption Lifecycle of Spotify India
The music streaming services industry in India has grown exponentially in the past 4 years. Music Streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, etc. offer unlimited access to their music libraries for a monthly subscription fee and for free, with forced commercial breaks between the songs.
As per an article by the Hindu BusinessLine, Indian consumers spend 21.58 hours per week listening to music (surpassing the global average of 17.89 hours a week), there are a myriad factors bolstering the growth of the Indian music streaming market.
The information below are statistics about the Music Streaming Services in India, provided by Statista.
Spotify India
We’re going to be talking about Spotify and how its launch has impacted the Indian Music Streaming industry.
Spotify launched in India on Feb 26th, 2019 and in a week’s time, Spotify already hit 1 Mn users in India. Spotify India launched to compete with Gaana, JioSaavn in India among other international giants like Apple Music and Amazon Prime Music.
Spotify is working with a 300-member team in Mumbai to capture the Indian market.
Product Adoption Curve
The product adoption curve is a standard model that reflects who buys your products and when.
Innovators: The Innovators are the first group of people to invest in your product. The innovators include journalists and tech reviewers who keep a watch on the market and are the first ones to test the product.
Early Adopters: Like innovators, Early Adopters tend to be ahead of everyone else, willing to test the waters. These are evangelists who are passionate about Music Streaming services in general and wish to get their hands on any new product that launches in the industry.
Early Majority: The people in the Early Majority are usually pragmatic and will only buy something once it’s been road-tested (at least a little bit) and has proven its value. They read blogs & watch reviews by the Innovators & Early Adopters to convince themselves. These are mostly millennials who have a fresh POV towards a booming industry.
Late Majority: The Late Majority are skeptics who need a little bit more than just reviews about a new product. These are people between the ages 35–55 who aren’t exposed to new technological developments and are mostly comfortable with using their current product. They will only switch if they are absolutely unsatisfied with the current product they’re using.
Laggards: These are the people who buy the product after all the hype has died down. Sometimes, laggards purchase a product years after it’s been released. They are extreme skeptics, who also coincidentally fall within the 35–55 age range, and don’t buy the product until much later in the product lifecycle.
As of July 2019, Spotify India falls in the Early Majority bracket of the Product Adoption Curve. It has surpassed its Innovators and Early Adopters curve since its launch and has had a rapid growth in the last 5 months.
What helped Spotify grow in India?
Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director of Spotify India, said in a statement, “The mobile internet revolution has led to a rapid rise in the number of connected Indians, making music streaming the preferred way to enjoy the music here,”
As per an article by Nikkei Asia Review, with more than 400 million users, India is already the largest smartphone market in the world after China. Sales of smartphones have been driven by the availability of high-speed internet services at inexpensive tariffs after Reliance Jio shook up India’s wireless market with cut-rate prices.
Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director of Spotify India said that India is an important strategic market for Spotify. Spotify’s personalisation, with its 3 billion playlists, is one of its biggest USPs. Being a market leader in podcasts globally is another fact that Spotify is banking on to differentiate itself, said Batra.
Spotify India vs Others
To begin with, Spotify India has Gaana and JioSaavn as its arch-rivals.
Gaana
As of February 2019, Gaana claimed to have 80 Mn monthly users with estimated annual revenue of $5 Mn and is aiming to reach 200 Mn users by 2020. The company is also investing in podcasts and originals space that caters to niche audiences and to drive more user retention.
JioSaavn
JioSaavn, the combined entity valued at over $1 Bn and formed after the acquisition of music streaming service Saavn by Reliance Jio in October 2018. The company has a catalogue of more than 45 Mn tracks in 15 languages with 38 Mn users and spanning across genres such as popular Bollywood music, international artists, long-form podcasts, and regional content.
Besides Gaana and JioSaavn, Hungama is another local player with over 55 Mn users (Hungama Music and Hungama Play combined) standing in queue to give tough fight to Spotify in India.
Spotify’s hacks for growth
Localisation is a core focus area for Spotify. “Broadly, 80 per cent of the music consumption is happening on local film content, that’s why anyone who wants to succeed in this market will have to look at local film content seriously,” said Batra. Keeping this in mind, Spotify has come up with an ‘actor playlist’, which they termed a small way to show how they localised.
Spotify has signed a content partnership with Indian film and music company T-Series getting access to a catalogue of 160,000 songs. They have also partnered with OnePlus and the world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev as exclusive advertising launch partners in India.
Considering the price-sensitive Indian audience, Spotify has launched with a freemium model similar to its local arch-rivals offering ad-free subscription service and ad-supporting free service. They have also launched an Indian music hub called Desi, which counts more than 930K followers and includes its own playlist, Desi Hits (77 songs), as of January 2019.
Conclusion
Spotify may seem to be well behind in terms of the number of subscribers, and in terms of reach. However gauging from the buzz leading up to its launch and its commitment to producing content tailor-made for Indian listeners, Spotify’s entry will further push innovation in terms of recommendation engines, content and business models in the online music streaming industry.
