One of the world's leading music streaming services, Spotify has made a debut in the Indian market, joining the existing international and domestic music streaming services such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Music, Gaana, and JioSaavn. The service will be available across mobile, desktop and tablets as an ad-supported free subscription as well as a paid premium subscriptions. Spotify Premium is an ad-free service priced at Rs 119 per month with high-quality streaming (320kbps) and the option of accessing music offline. Users can also pay for monthly or yearly subscriptions using Paytm credit and debit cards.
"As Spotify grows, our goal is to bring millions of artists and billions of fans together from every country and background," says 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, it will also bring the world's music to fans across India. Spotify's music family just got a whole lot bigger."
The Sweden-based company claims to have redesigned the music experience for India with a fresh set of exclusive features. For instance, 'multi-language music recommendations' feature uses Spotify's music recommendation engine that 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. Another feature is 'Free with total control' that has been introduced for the first time, allowing smartphone users to play every song on demand on Spotify Free. Spotify has playlists made for India that are curated and regularly updated by the team of Indian music experts. It also includes city playlists to figure out what is hot in the city, with new algorithmic playlists tracking what is trending in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.
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"Indians love music. It is an inherent part of our lifestyle and culture, whether we pray, work, or relax. The mobile internet revolution has led to a rapid rise in the number of connected Indians, making music streaming the preferred way to enjoy music here. Spotify pioneered music streaming a decade ago, and has constantly reinvented itself to bring the best music experience to the world, and now to India. Through our unmatched personalised experience, we want users to find the best music from India and the world, and empower Indian artists to find new audiences in India and worldwide," says Amarjit Singh Batra, Managing Director, Spotify India.
Spotify offers more than 40 million songs and 3 billion playlists across favourite music in Indian and international music, across moods and moments. It can be used to play music in the car, on TV, voice and Wi-Fi speaker along with integrations with Google Maps, Tinder and Instagram, among others. Spotify is available on over 500 products across 200 hardware brands globally.
Available across 79 markets, Spotify has 207 million active users, of which 96 million are paid users. The company says that approximately 30,000 new tracks are added each day, and has paid 10 billion euros to rights holders since launch in October 2008.
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