Pretty sure a high percentage of these listeners are using free tier. And most of them using it just to brag that they are listening to music on Spotify.
Their music collection is one of the worst among all services present in India. Lots of major international records are not available. Regional music collection is not good. Only the mainstream/popular content is available.
Bought the premium subscription on very first day of launch. Tried using it for few days. Found major stuff missing.
Cancelled and got the refund. Kudos to them for prompt service on this.
But very bad in comparison to Apple Music and other Indian services.
Apple Music costs similar for individual account and much cheaper with a family account, has much better International and Indian collection and really good playlists collections, at least in India.
I used to pay for GrooveShark (which clearly was sketchy lol) and then Spotify, since I subscribed to Google All Music Access I have never had to pirate music just to get access to it. I can cache all the music I like (download it for offline listening) and it works on my iPad too. I wish they had an official desktop client for offline sync, but Google seems allergic to non-web desktop solutions.
I try to avoid getting sucked into Google's Ecosystem, but GAMA is pretty damn good. Sadly I don't know what the situation for GAMA looks like outside of the USA.
Edit:
But my point is, I hated Spotify, I still found myself forced to "acquire" music. This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own. People who don't want to pay for music will not pay for it no matter what you do. At least with Google when I buy music I can sync it to my local machine, but with GAMA I don't have to. The other upside is I get no ads on YouTube since I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium. Yes, I know, AdBlock, but I got grandfathered in to no ads, why would I care about AdBlock?
Is Google Music the same as Youtube Music because I signed up a 2-3 weeks ago and have found it to be horrid at finding new music. No matter what I do it keeps trying to sneak in popular tracks into recommendations. I think of the 200 to so songs I've gone through I've clicked dislike on 185 and it still keeps pouring in the crap. As an example I put in "Anja Garbarek" and picked "Radio" and it played Maroon 5 ?!?. I put in "BodyRockers" and it played rap and EDM.
I've enjoyed my Google music subscription for years as well, but I think it's pretty shady that lately they keep trying to bundle in a free YouTube subscription.
I still buy movies, and I have a fair bit of purchased music from before the subscription, so I'll be more than annoyed if I end up with my media library sitting in YouTube Red if they try to converge the products. Spotify would be high on a short list of alternatives if that happens.
>1 million people using Spotify and wasting data pack to brag to their friends? Seriously?
It's evident you don't know India... Most young people in India have dozens of pictures on Facebook of themselves pretending to talk on their mobiles with seemingly expensive sunglasses on. It's like their own particular ice bucket challenge.
I've been a long time Apple Music user. Spotify definitely has weaker collection. But, I like the cross platformness/integrations of it. I can cast to chrome cast, play it on linux, and other third party integrations. Also, spotify connect is really nice. That said, Apple did start integrating Apple music with third party providers too (alexa, google home comes to mind). We'll see how it goes.
I have a wonderful thing that Creative used to make, now discontinued I believe. It consists of a USB dongle that appears as a pair of USB stereo speakers to the computer but is actually a radio transmitter, and a matching receiver unit that has stereo line level outputs.
No need for any special drivers, or any special support on the part of music player apps. As long as whatever the player is running on knows how to use USB speakers, I can get the sound to end up at my A/V receiver.
I don't know why this approach was not more popular.
You're speaking of Apple Music, however this implies mostly Apple hardware. How many Indians own iPhones? (and for Android, last time I tried the app, it was a piece of shit).
And personally I'm not happy with the selection of Apple Music from my country (Romania). Not only that but their radio recommendations are absolutely shit. All music streaming services actually pale in comparison with YouTube in terms of availability and even recommendations.
The only problem with YouTube is that the Premium service is only available in a few select countries. If only Google could pull its head out of its ass and give customers that want to pay money a way to do so.
What Spotify has going for it is integration with most devices you care about. Can you stream Apple Music on your Playstation? No you can't. Their apps also have an obvious feature that's sorely missing from alternatives: the ability to remotely control a device, or to painlessly switch devices and pick up where you left off. Spotify are also the only ones with a usable Linux client, with all the others you have to settle for the web interface, which sorely lacks integration with the keyboard's playback buttons.
And their selection has been improving. This reminds me of when Netflix came to Romania in 2016, their selection was shit and they didn't even have subtitles. Nowadays Netflix is widely popular and has really good shows (compared with the established alternatives).
That said nowadays I seem to get along better with Deezer (https://deezer.com), as their automated recommendations seem to work better. And btw, I tried most streaming services available, even local ones (e.g. Zonga.ro) and Apple Music is the last one I'd pick.
How did you get a refund when their premium plan comes with the first 30 days free? I signed up for the premium plan too, without having paid anything for the first 30 days. https://www.spotify.com/in/premium/?checkout=false#PLANS
Not just in India, in US too. The only reason i’m using AM is because of their library in many languages. I can find indian songs (of many languages), english songs and songs from other languages
I used it for a while as it came bundled with Prime. It has good collection of tracks, international, mainstream and regional. But the interface is clunky and curation and discovery is almost non-existent.
Personal anecdote, but it's nice to see the growing maturity of the Indian audience - no one in my circle of friends and family is complaining that big names such as Linkin Park, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay et al. and rock/metal biggies (Slipknot/Dream Theater/Pantera et al.) are missing. Growing tastes, perhaps?
And it's amazing to see Spotify grow so quickly. Almost all of the people I know (I'm guilty of the same) used a US free-tier account, and sideloaded modded applications to listen to Spotify. I used to think that was piracy as usual, but now all of us are on 1-year subscriptions. The price sensitivity ($9.99/month in US vs $1.68/month in India) does obviously make a difference.
>Personal anecdote, but it's nice to see the growing maturity of the Indian audience - no one in my circle of friends and family is complaining that big names such as Linkin Park, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay et al. and rock/metal biggies (Slipknot/Dream Theater/Pantera et al.) are missing. Growing tastes, perhaps?
Or merely a circle of friends totally unrepresentative of mainstream Indian tastes?
So Spotify in India is missing a lot of the big-name artists? That's a little sad as I always felt one of the the big benefits of Spotify is they seem to have EVERYTHING. Video streaming services like Netflix are a joke in comparison.
There are three major music publishers (UMG, Sony, Warner). As long as you have contracts with them, you'll have nearly everything.
Spotify's not the only competing service that has almost everything. Tidal, Google Play Music, Apple Music, they've all managed to get a deal with those publishers. Smaller players like Deezer even manage to offer the same service to 180+ countries (compared to Spotify's 20).
Netflix and others would also have nearly everything if the majority of the movies was produced by three publishers.
> Video streaming services like Netflix are a joke in comparison.
Netflix realised quite rapidly that it was a fools errand to try to have everything.
Given the choice between paying top dollar for every blockbuster film (which engage people for two hours at a time), Netflix invested in TV series and producing its own material, which works out cheaper and keeps people watching for much much longer. Netflix's movie catalogue has shrunk since 2010 (mostly due to Epix moving its films over to Hulu), but the TV inventory has tripled.
Netflix also benefits from TV/movies being more fungible, and with a better long tail than music. If Netflix doesn't have a TV show or movie, you'll likely find something else you want to watch. If Spotify doesn't have Taylor Swift, it doesn't have Taylor Swift.
Spotify India user here. At midnight when I found out from my friends that they launched in India, I switched from my $9.99/mo shared account from some internet service to Spotify's $1.67/mo within minutes.
Spotify had a pretty neat prepaid option too, where your subscription doesn't renew until you manually recharge. Was cool of them to add such an India-specific feature at launch.
For someone who listens to a lot of International rock/metal/post-rock etc I can say most of the names and even some obscure Norwegian/Australian bands are present. The ppl complaining probably are referring to local content(Bollywood/Marathi/Hindi/Tamil music). The recommendation engine is fabulous as always and the podcasts section has a pretty decent collection too
Jio, the largest cell phone service in India, with about 280 million subscribers, recently acquired another streaming service called Saavn, and it is available for free for Jio customers (along with their Tivo-like TV streaming service and their movies).
P.S - I work for Jio.
P.S2 - Apple music also costs the same as spotify in India.
To reply to Zuron's comments: Even assuming Spotify experience is better, it is a question of pricing. Jio currently offers unlimited calls, text and 1.5GB of data per day (which includes all you can stream) for about the same price (USD 2.10 per month for the whole thing whereas Spotify charges USD 1.70 just for music streaming). I am trying to making a humble point that there are some incredible values to be obtained at this price point in India today.
The company I work for is going through its worst year because of JIO. It just feels good to read this here on HN. We know the truth even if the general public / consumers ignore because of disinterest, media ignores because of fear, and the Govt. looks away for self interest.
But, let's be honest, the experience that Spotify provides is way better than what Saavn does. I can change music remotely on any device, get much better recommendations, and listen to podcasts conveniently.
The only recommendation system I really liked was of Pandora. Spotify's is a joke, playlists and radio got a lot better compared to 2-3 years ago but I can't just put the radio ON and forget like I can, with Pandora.
Apple Music's family subscription costs on Rs.180 for 6 users. That's an order of magnitude cheaper than Spotify, which to me seems super hyped. There can't be 1 single best way to discover music, people tell me that they find great music through me, but that's because I constantly listen to new music with the intention of finding great songs. Buying a few recommendation companies can't solve music discovery.
I like Gaana more, It seems to me, it has bigger collection than Saavn. Their business model ( pay for download, free to listen online ) failed completely because of Jio, still they are surviving somehow. Please also buy Gaana, while you guys are at it.
Is net neutrality a thing in India? Because that sounds like a clear case of an infrastructure providing content which could lead to a lot of conflict of interest (like the bundling and lower price that you mention)
This is just positive PR now that Spotify is publicly traded. It's not a serious indication of their success in this market.
This truly just means that 1 million people in India "downloaded" the app: a good share who were waiting for it and wanted to pay and a great share that are using it since it's also offered here for free. Plus there's already strong competitors with cheaper services and a lot more songs (including Apple Music).
If Spotify's only USP will be its song discovery, I doubt they'll get a lot of Indian users to switch just for that.
That's not a bad number to start with! I have used Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, Google Music, Saavn and Gaana etc. They all differ from one another in terms of collection. Now I am using Spotify in India -- though at this point in time it lacks a collection of regional music and playlists, it still has the better interface and options to use it across different devices compared to others. I guess once Spotify curates better regional music, it will have an edge over other services.
I would love some good Bhangra sources. Spotify is good for "Hottest 100" lists but digging deeper seems hard from within the app, I rely on external blog playlists like Dummy. I've yet to see a music app nail discovery.
For punjabi songs, I feel Apple Music and Saavn are the best. Both have really good collection and atleast Apple Music has a good curation of playlists as well. Have been using it for almost a year now.
Amazon prime music also has a very large collection of music + gaana.com offers yearly memberships for 99rs and Jio has saavn which is free for Jio users (at least currently) so they are up against some very tough competition since most of these services are ad free and free.
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Their music collection is one of the worst among all services present in India. Lots of major international records are not available. Regional music collection is not good. Only the mainstream/popular content is available. Bought the premium subscription on very first day of launch. Tried using it for few days. Found major stuff missing.
Cancelled and got the refund. Kudos to them for prompt service on this.
But very bad in comparison to Apple Music and other Indian services. Apple Music costs similar for individual account and much cheaper with a family account, has much better International and Indian collection and really good playlists collections, at least in India.
I try to avoid getting sucked into Google's Ecosystem, but GAMA is pretty damn good. Sadly I don't know what the situation for GAMA looks like outside of the USA.
Edit:
But my point is, I hated Spotify, I still found myself forced to "acquire" music. This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own. People who don't want to pay for music will not pay for it no matter what you do. At least with Google when I buy music I can sync it to my local machine, but with GAMA I don't have to. The other upside is I get no ads on YouTube since I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium. Yes, I know, AdBlock, but I got grandfathered in to no ads, why would I care about AdBlock?
I still buy movies, and I have a fair bit of purchased music from before the subscription, so I'll be more than annoyed if I end up with my media library sitting in YouTube Red if they try to converge the products. Spotify would be high on a short list of alternatives if that happens.
From what I understand, digital downloads from iTunes and the likes are basically just a perpetual license?
It won’t get you new stuff, but if you’re trying to fill your back catalog in, you can’t beat the price of goodwill.
nitpick, but it's “Google Play Music All Access”
1 million people using Spotify and wasting data pack to brag to their friends? Seriously?
These days, data limit is nothing to worry about in India.
It's evident you don't know India... Most young people in India have dozens of pictures on Facebook of themselves pretending to talk on their mobiles with seemingly expensive sunglasses on. It's like their own particular ice bucket challenge.
No need for any special drivers, or any special support on the part of music player apps. As long as whatever the player is running on knows how to use USB speakers, I can get the sound to end up at my A/V receiver.
I don't know why this approach was not more popular.
And personally I'm not happy with the selection of Apple Music from my country (Romania). Not only that but their radio recommendations are absolutely shit. All music streaming services actually pale in comparison with YouTube in terms of availability and even recommendations.
The only problem with YouTube is that the Premium service is only available in a few select countries. If only Google could pull its head out of its ass and give customers that want to pay money a way to do so.
What Spotify has going for it is integration with most devices you care about. Can you stream Apple Music on your Playstation? No you can't. Their apps also have an obvious feature that's sorely missing from alternatives: the ability to remotely control a device, or to painlessly switch devices and pick up where you left off. Spotify are also the only ones with a usable Linux client, with all the others you have to settle for the web interface, which sorely lacks integration with the keyboard's playback buttons.
And their selection has been improving. This reminds me of when Netflix came to Romania in 2016, their selection was shit and they didn't even have subtitles. Nowadays Netflix is widely popular and has really good shows (compared with the established alternatives).
That said nowadays I seem to get along better with Deezer (https://deezer.com), as their automated recommendations seem to work better. And btw, I tried most streaming services available, even local ones (e.g. Zonga.ro) and Apple Music is the last one I'd pick.
> Pretty sure a high percentage of these listeners have downloaded and tried the free tier.
Because most of us aren't really using it, are we?
I installed the app. Bought premium. Cancelled it. Uninstalled the app.
All in a matter of few days.
All the above currently have more songs (except Prime) on them than Spotify in India does.
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And it's amazing to see Spotify grow so quickly. Almost all of the people I know (I'm guilty of the same) used a US free-tier account, and sideloaded modded applications to listen to Spotify. I used to think that was piracy as usual, but now all of us are on 1-year subscriptions. The price sensitivity ($9.99/month in US vs $1.68/month in India) does obviously make a difference.
Or merely a circle of friends totally unrepresentative of mainstream Indian tastes?
OP, mainstream music is just that, mainstream, it's watered down precisely because most people like watered down music ;)
Spotify's not the only competing service that has almost everything. Tidal, Google Play Music, Apple Music, they've all managed to get a deal with those publishers. Smaller players like Deezer even manage to offer the same service to 180+ countries (compared to Spotify's 20).
Netflix and others would also have nearly everything if the majority of the movies was produced by three publishers.
Netflix realised quite rapidly that it was a fools errand to try to have everything.
Given the choice between paying top dollar for every blockbuster film (which engage people for two hours at a time), Netflix invested in TV series and producing its own material, which works out cheaper and keeps people watching for much much longer. Netflix's movie catalogue has shrunk since 2010 (mostly due to Epix moving its films over to Hulu), but the TV inventory has tripled.
Netflix also benefits from TV/movies being more fungible, and with a better long tail than music. If Netflix doesn't have a TV show or movie, you'll likely find something else you want to watch. If Spotify doesn't have Taylor Swift, it doesn't have Taylor Swift.
Really. Spotify's library is decent, but I find it is missing a fair bit of content that is available on youtube, etc
Spotify had a pretty neat prepaid option too, where your subscription doesn't renew until you manually recharge. Was cool of them to add such an India-specific feature at launch.
Rs. 119 per month (1.7$)
Rs. 1189 per year (16.85$)
And also, funnily, "top-up" plans:
Rs. 13 for 1 day (18c)
Rs. 39 for 1 week (54c)
Rs. 389 for 3 months (5.5$)
Rs. 719 for 6 months (10.2$)
Also available are student plans, which give you a 50% discount on the monthly plans. So you could end up using Spotify for ~85c a month in India.
For example they are missing names like Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Whitesnake, Fleetwood Mac etc.
P.S - I work for Jio.
P.S2 - Apple music also costs the same as spotify in India.
To reply to Zuron's comments: Even assuming Spotify experience is better, it is a question of pricing. Jio currently offers unlimited calls, text and 1.5GB of data per day (which includes all you can stream) for about the same price (USD 2.10 per month for the whole thing whereas Spotify charges USD 1.70 just for music streaming). I am trying to making a humble point that there are some incredible values to be obtained at this price point in India today.
@Ing33K - Yes that is me.
Hey, I remember you from your username. you were hiring for some fintech company. Were you hiring for JioMoney ?
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This truly just means that 1 million people in India "downloaded" the app: a good share who were waiting for it and wanted to pay and a great share that are using it since it's also offered here for free. Plus there's already strong competitors with cheaper services and a lot more songs (including Apple Music).
If Spotify's only USP will be its song discovery, I doubt they'll get a lot of Indian users to switch just for that.
Whether they are able to remain competitive is another matter.