Adoption in India

The music streaming services stand in the product adoption lifecycle. The product adoption curve is a standard model that shows who buys your products and when.

Innovators: The Innovators are the first set of people to invest in any product. They are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial liquidity, are very social and have closest contact to influential sources and interaction with other innovators. In music streaming — these will be the die hard music fans who spend excessively on concerts and spend a lot of time on music apps , some of them can even be musicians and creators of their own music — hence any improvement in features is a big value addition to them.

Early Adopters: Like innovators, Early Adopters tend to be ahead of everyone else, willing to test the products. Early Adopters have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. They are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. In music industry similar to Innovators early adapters are heavy listeners of music on streaming apps however mostly for amateur purposes.

Early Majority: The people in the Early Majority are usually pragmatic and will only buy something once it’s been pre-tested. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the Innovators and Early Adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, have contact with Early Adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership or influence. Within the music streaming space these might be people who listen to music for a specific time of the day 1–2 hours and are happy with the current offering though are open to switching if recommended by their friends belonging to early adopters group.

Late Majority: The Late Majority are skeptics who need a little bit more than just reviews about a new product. They approach a new product with a high degree of skepticism and only after the majority of society has adopted the product already. They are also typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, very little financial lucidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority, very little opinion leadership. Typical age group in this category is between 35–55 years. Very light usage of streaming apps which is not enough to warrant switching from one app to another.

Laggards: These are the people who buy the product last in the cycle. These individuals typically have an aversion to change and tend to be advanced in age. Usually not premium subscribers and pricing is also not a lever that can trigger switching.

Overall in India music streaming is in the majority stage with increasing adoption in the late majority user group.

Different Music Streaming Services in India

Three main archetypes of streaming services —

(1) Exclusive Music Apps — Spotify, Gaana

(2) Tech Platforms — Amazon, Apple, Youtube

(3) Telecom Player Offered Apps — Wynk, Jio Saavn

Product Benchmarking

Pricing — Almost all the major music streaming services available in India have premium subscriptions at Rs 99/month, except for Amazon Music, which is tied to an Amazon Prime subscription, as well as Apple Music, that goes for a high Rs 120 for an individual membership. Wynk has a complicated price tiering depending on OS. If you are an Android user, the subscription costs the usual Rs 99/month. iOS users have to shell out Rs 120 per month, but iOS users with an Airtel SIM get a discounted rate of Rs 60/month. The little to no difference here makes any comparison depend on all the add-ons you get with the subscription. When it comes to the library itself, Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Prime Music rule the roost at more than 40 million tracks. Gaana, Saavn and Spotify following up at 30. Hungama Music, along with the carrier-backed Jio Music and Wynk Music lag behind here with 10 million or less tracks on their platforms.

Ads — While most Indian platforms get rid of ads for premium users, Amazon Music doesn’t come with ads. Instead, the entire platform is locked behind the premium Prime membership. This is similar to what Apple Music does with only Beats Radio being available for free. Google Play Music, on the other hand, offers free stations, where you cannot choose which tracks are to be played or skip more than 10 times per hour. The paid subscription on the same unlocks the entire library for streaming and offline playback. You can even buy individual tracks for offline playback and streaming if so desired. Indian platforms including Gaana, Saavn, Hungama offer their entire catalogue for free with ads, a la Spotify, along with multi-device playback up to 5 devices while limiting certain features such as HD streaming and downloads. The HD is not worth it if you don’t have the right audio equipment to tell the difference. Wynk offers discount pricing for Airtel users, whereas Jio Music is entirely unavailable to non-Jio users. Spotify is the most expensive at $9.99, but the features and the recommendation engine on the platform make it worth it, and even though it is not officially available in India, people have found ways to make it work here.

Free Trials- Most of these platforms offer free trials for you to use and judge them first hand. Starting from Spotify’s short 7-day trial, Play Music and Gaana are limited to 14 days, and Amazon Music, with the Prime trial, goes up to 30 days along with Hungama Music. Apple Music takes this one with a three month trial period. So, if you just want to play music for free, Gaana, Saavn and Spotify are obvious choices. For specific tracks at high quality, you’ll have to shell some cash, regardless of the platform.

Content- Apple is well ahead of everyone else with a vast library of 45 million songs. That lead compared to the closest competitors, Google Play Music or Amazon Prime (at 40 million tracks) is more than the total library sizes of some of the streaming services on the list, such as Wynk or Hungama. Wynk arranges the content according to the languages selected. The problem is the first language in the list is prioritised for the content. Marathi and Hindi are above English on this list, and the experience of using the app changes if you choose to use English only. Gaana’s entire UI is oriented towards local content, which is a good thing. The “collections” have simple, easy to understand titles such as “rock”, “pop”, “melody”, “kids” and “Hindi”. As a long-term player in the streaming services industry, Gaana offers original content, and heavily depends on curation as well. Saavn is a mature music streaming service, with a focus on offering regional language and local content. At over 30 million tracks, Saavn offers what looks like the most comprehensive collection of Indian music among all the streaming services. Google Play music has a trump card up its sleeve. That is because it is a music streaming service as well as a locker.

Number of Devices playback - Most of the music services offer multi-device support in some way or the other. If you are looking at just the ability to sign in on multiple devices, then after Spotify’s unlimited devices, Google Play Music comes in a close second at 10 devices (out of which 5 can be smartphones). While Gaana and Saavn are limited to 5 devices, Amazon Prime Music is also on par with Google at 10

Conclusion — When it came to offering the best overall package, Gaana emerges as the winner, followed closely by Saavn. Both of these Indian platforms offer a good mix of free content and paid features, with Gaana beating Saavn by a small margin due to certain additional features and comparatively better scores in our performance tests

Industry Analysis

Factors contributing to the growth of music streaming services —

(1) Growing Internet Penetration — An annual rise of 18% growth in access to internet connectivity, reaching around 627 million (source) — highly influencing people to have access to music streaming apps. Players like Jio changed how access to the internet can be extremely cheap for the next billion users. India also happens to be the cheapest provider of data in the world

(2) Smartphone Penetration — The increasing usage of smartphones in India over the last 5 years has a tremendous influence on the music streaming apps. Apart from big manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, India has also seen the rise of manufacturers from abroad gaining market share in India like Oppo, One Plus, Vivo as well as Xiomi

Factors inhibiting the growth of music streaming services —

Price Conscious Consumer: Indian consumer mindset surrounding the pricing is a show stopper in revenue generation for certain players in music streaming.Apple Music for example, the most expensive amongst these services, is priced at Rs. 120 (~ $1.85) — When compared to the average price of $10/ month for these services adopted globally, the pricing for the Indian market seems to be significantly reduced.

Piracy: Music piracy and legallity around the music copyrights is another major challenge affecting this industry growth.The IFPI states that 54% of the internet users in India access unlicensed services on a monthly basis

Radio: Radio still seems to be the choice of music consumption medium with a large proportion of Indian population being rural with limited access to high speed internet and bandwidth.

Growth Hacks

(1) Acquire New users — Partnership with mobile phone manufacturers, telecom companies, Cafes like CCD, Ride sharing platforms like Ola, Uber. Sponsor events & concerts like NH7, Advertise digitally

(2) Monetize — Innovative pricing packs such as weekly or daily to reduce upfront amount needed for membership, Musical ads integrated into listening experience, Produce original content and license it

(3) Drive referrals — Perks on referrals such as free subscriptions, campus ambassadors, shared Spotify original content, and music artist brand ambassadors.