Finally the global leader in the online music streaming industry, Spotify has officially set its foot in India. Premium subscription for the service is priced at Rs 119 per month and goes alway up to Rs 1,189 per year. The service would offer over 40 million songs and three billion playlists in India. You could also listen to thousands of Podcasts, including originals.
Spotify in India offers multi-language recommendations across Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and English. Based on your preferences like music languages and artist selection, Spotify would use its algorithm-based music recommendations engine, to offer a ready-made playlist that suits your mood.
Premium Pricing
Spotify has gone for a premium pricing strategy in India. The monthly Spotify premium ad-free subscription service will cost you 119 INR. For a whole year of Spotify premium subscription, you would need to shell out 1189 INR. For those who don’t want to commit for a recurring subscription, you could also choose from the one-day, 7-days, one month, three months and six months packs. It starts as low as Rs 13 a day, Rs 39 a week, Rs 129 a month, Rs 389 for 3 months and Rs 719 for 6 months. These are a one-time payment and you could enjoy Spotify premium for the prescribed time period.
You could subscribe or prepay for Spotify premium via Credit card and Debit card. There are also India specific payment gateways like Paytm and UPI for taking the subscription.
Spotify premium gives you exclusive access to features like offline playback (download music directly to your device), ad-free with zero interruptions, HD sound quality and plays everywhere on your speakers, TV, Amazon Echo or Google Home devices.
Don’t want to pay? Spotify also offers an ad-supported free tier to users in India. You could simply choose a playlist and start streaming music or podcasts, however with a frequent interruption in the form of ads. Still, Spotify would let you stream each and every song on demand. Which when compared to other international markets, where the playlists are locked to shuffle play.
Spotify took more than a year of research and overtook bigger hurdles with local record labels to launch its music streaming service in India. It has set up an office in Mumbai a year ago and has over 300 people working full time for them. During its time in India, the music streaming service has been able to secure deals with T-Series, one of India’s biggest music record label along with Sony Music and Universal. It’s still wrestling with Warner group in the country.
Talking about rivals, Spotify would face stiff competition from already well established Indian players like Reliance Jio backed Saavn, Gaana, Hungama, Amazon Music, Google Play Music and Apple Music. There are also music streaming services from big telecom players Airtel and Vodafone-Idea. It seems Spotify is targeting the premium users, as it’s premium pricing is one of the most expensive music streaming services in India.
Spotify is available on Android and iOS devices, or you could start streaming via a web player. One last thing, if you’re a student and got a college ID you’re eligible for a 50 per cent discount on Spotify premium subscription.