Amarjit Singh Batra, general manager, SAMEA (South Asia, Middle East, Africa) and managing director, Spotify India opened up about his five years growth in India while addressing the incredible popularity of Arijit Singh. Five years has passed since the music streaming platform’s release in India and also became its 79th market in the world. In a recent interview with Forbes India Amarjit discusses what strategies the global giant is planning to do in the Indian market.
Batra shared the unique future plans
Batra told the outlet about its success “To be able to do well in a market with so much diversity and unique depth, we’re very excited about what has been achieved. We are equally excited about where we are going now.”
He also shed light to strategies they might use in future one of it will be localisation.
He shared, “localisation has been key to our strategy since day one. We have close to 600 playlists catering to multiple regional languages on Spotify—from Punjabi 101 to Bollywood Central and many more. Spotify in India has pivoted from nearly 70 percent international music streaming at launch, to more than 70 percent local music streaming today. The growth in consumption spans several local languages, with Malayalam being the fastest growing for music consumption worldwide, at a growth of over 5,300 percent, followed by Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, and Hindi.”
Moreover, adding, their “wish to continue doing this for films across languages.”
Therefore, shedding light on the competitive pricing strategy Batra added, “ We feel that we have been fairly successful in changing people’s mindset when it comes to paying for music. There is still a lot of piracy, but we feel that we have managed to tilt the needle much further from what it used to be.”
He continued, “One of the reasons for the shift in customer behaviour I would think was our pricing strategy. We created pricing options that were highly competitive. For instance, we had all options from yearly to monthly plans, as well as the sachet options such as one-day or seven-day premium packages. Also, integrating payment interfaces like UPI has also helped us immensely.”
Moreover as for their future plans, “ In 2024 and beyond, the focus for Spotify in India will remain on contributing to the success of artists locally and globally, especially in the world of film and I-Pop fandom, and enabling podcasters to find the best ways to create and monetise content creation. It will also continue providing the best opportunities for brands to advertise on the platform to music fans and podcast listeners (Spotify Audience Network), launching new features that make Spotify more personalised, and making Premium more accessible and relevant for India.”
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