‘India Continues to Love K-Pop'

Spotify India MD Amarjit Singh on insights from the platform’s latest annual audio trends round-up, why India is crucial to its global growth and the company’s expansion plans for the country

- MANSVINI KAUSHIK

The Covid-19 lockdown gave a boost to the audio streaming industry. Swedish audio streaming platform Spotify, which launched in India in February 2019, recorded a 29 percent year-on-year growth in its global monthly active users (MAUs) in Q3 2020, reaching 320 million, with the MAU growth buoyed by India.

With the success of podcasts on the platform globally, Spotify in September signed a deal with American production company Chernin Entertainment to create television (TV), movies, and digital video programming based on Spotify’s original podcast series in the US. The deal also enables it to look at Chernin’s dozens of entertainment projects in development for potential podcasts.

Amarjit Singh, MD, Spotify India, speaks to Forbes India about where the country figures in its global strategy.

Q Spotify clocked 320 million MAUs in Q3 2020. What are some of the factors for this and how has Spotify done in India?

Since we launched in India, it has been one of the key markets that has contributed to our growth. We’ve been extremely localised in our strategy and built a strong local team. There are three key areas we’ve focussed on to make Spotify relevant for India.

The first is to have product features designed for India, such as languages, relevant recommendations and playlists, and more, which directly impact user experience. We’ve also launched 25 Spotify original podcasts in India. Our marketing campaigns seem to have struck a chord with users, and third, we have a vibrant artist and creator community in India... we have conducted various masterclasses with labels, artists and their managers on using Spotify to their advantage.