The leading music streaming platform Spotify has announced the launch of its original podcasts for the Indian marketplace, called Spotify Podcasts Originals. The announcement was made by Spotify India MD Amarjit Singh Batra during the launch event.
The Swedish giant, with over 2 million MAUs (monthly active users) in India, has been focussing on the Indian market with various offerings, including a Lite application, cheaper subscription plans, and playlists catering towards the music needs of regional language music listeners.
Spotify Podcast Originals forms on the strategy that has been adopted by other OTT players in India that focussed on generating localized content which is explicitly targetted for the Indian audiences.
According to reports, Spotify plans to drop three podcasts live on 3rd December, namely, cricket-centric 22 Yarns with Gaurav Kapur, fiction thriller Bhaskar Bose narrated by Mantra Mugdh, and love & relationship advice-based Love Aaj Kal by Aastha & Ankit.
Spotify India MD Batra said, “Spotify wants to re-establish that listening culture here especially as users seek more screen-free moments.”
India has already been featuring in all-time top 3 streaming markets for shows like On Purpose with Jay Shetty, which has been number 1 on the platform since its launch, and for Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD’s Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast. Spotify India also stated its plans to enter vernacular language content.
Spotify in India
Spotify India reported having a 30% YoY growth in its global MAUs totaling to 248 million. In India itself, the company has reportedly outperformed its expectations in Q3 of 2019.
Batra stated, in terms of audio content, India stands in the top ten streaming markets for TED Talks Daily and The Mindset Mentor. The majority of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify are about self-help or self-motivation genre. It claimed that in terms of listening hours for podcasts, the growth has been about 39% globally from Q2 ’18 to Q3 ’19, with a preponderance of the growth and listening coming from outside the US.
Batra said that where over 45% of the users pay for Spotify worldwide, less than 1% of users pay for music in India. Individuals are still moving from illegal pirated content towards free music streaming services.
Spotify allows you to stream music from your individual account on different devices like Spotify web player, Spotify tablet player, etc.
