Audio streaming platform Spotify celebrates two years of its launch in India on Tuesday. On the occasion, Amarjit Singh Batra, Managing Director of Spotify India said, “India is a vast and diverse market India is a vast and diverse market, and the love for audio runs deep. Over two years, we’ve gained insights on how our listeners here consume music and podcasts, and tapped into these learnings to establish a deep relationship with listeners, creators, and brands.”
Data released by Spotify from the last year shows that playlists such as ‘Latest Tamil’, ‘Latest Telugu’, ‘Bollywood Dance Music’, ‘Top Hits Hindi’ grew the most year-on-year. The playlist ‘Indie India’ also grew exponentially—90%-- year-on-year. More than 20 Indian artists, from Antariksh to Sarathy Korwar were featured on international playlists. In the same vein, Desi Pop was a popular genre among the international audience, along with Indian EDM and Indian independent artists.
The data also shows that for young Indians, aged 17 and below, international pop was a favourite genre. Popular Korean pop band BTS’s chartbuster album Dynamite was a hit among Indian youth as well. Interestingly, international pop music the age group of 55 years and above showed a liking towards international pop as well (especially the hit song Blinding Lights by The Weeknd), along with remixed versions of old Bollywood songs like O Saki Saki.
Interestingly, about half the music streamed in states such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra was in foreign languages like French, Turkish and Japanese.
With respect to podcasts, public speaker Jay Shetty’s On Purpose with Jay Shetty is a favourite across generations, according to Spotify. Another favourite podcast among 18-29-year-old Indians is Maha Bharath with Dhruv Rathee. The Telugu podcast PURIJAGANNADH, powered by Anchor, was also widely streamed by Indians over the age of 55.
On the occasion of Spotify’s second anniversary in India, the company announced that it is working on launching its services in 12 Indian languages-- Hindi, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Bengali. It will also expand its Sound Up initiative in India, which aims to aid underrepresented podcasters.