Spotify launches in India, to take on JioSaavn, Apple Music, Amazon Music

Ahead of its IPO in April 2018, global audio-streaming giant Spotify had confirmed its imminent India launch in an investor presentation. It even called India a “big market” and said that awareness about its brand was high among Indians. Spotify spent the next few months striking content licensing deals with India’s top music labels, and even fighting court battles with Warner Music over royalties, which is said to have delayed its India launch.  

The good news is Spotify has finally started rolling out in the Indian market. Even though an official announcement is due, users across Android, iOS, and web started gaining access to the music-streaming service since Tuesday evening. Spotify is available both as an ad-supported free service as well as a premium, subscription-driven one.

To cater to the price-sensitive Indian market, Spotify is offering a bunch of subscription plans - yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily. “Millions of songs starting at Rs 13 per day,” claims the Spotify website. All plans come with a 30-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.

A yearly Spotify subscription costs Rs 1,189 (that’s about Rs 99 a month) and a monthly one comes at Rs 119 (that is Re 1 cheaper than a monthly Apple Music plan). Student plans are available from Rs 59 a month. Spotify has enabled payments through cards and mobile wallets (Paytm and UPI).

Paid users gain access to 3X better quality sound, ad-free streaming, song downloads, offline playback, and syncing across multiple devices. Spotify had earlier said that it is banking on the growth of “payment-enabled smartphones” in India.

Also Read: Amazon brings Prime Music to India with high localisation and Alexa-led personalisation

In terms of its music catalogue, Spotify has made available over 40 million songs and three billion playlists in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. There are multiple artists and albums to choose from. Users can also get city-based playlists and multi-language recommendations from experts.

Daniel Ek, Founder and CEO, Spotify, said in a statement,

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 competes with global rivals such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Google Play Music as well as Indian streaming services like JioSaavn, Gaana (backed by Tencent Music last year), and Wynk in a rapidly growing audio market. Domestic music-streaming revenues are projected to cross Rs 3,100 crore by 2020, according to Deloitte.

Spotify, which has 207 million active users worldwide, will surely hope to grab a share of that pie!

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