State of Music Streaming Apps in India (2020 edition)
By: Abhinav Gaurav
Tags: Youtube Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Music Player, India

To understand the context of this post, you really need to go and read this one first.

https://abhinavgaurav.in/2019/04/14/state-of-music-streaming-apps-in-india-right-now/

Now that you have read the 2019 edition, let’s see what has changed in the mean time.

Results are mixed bags, some were expected and some gave me a reality check on my understanding on Indian Consumers. Now that most of the new entrants had spent sometime in India, so market is going towards a saturation point and then the real game begins — the monetization and retention game.

Players who are still relevant: Players who lost their shine:

Note: They are still thriving but didn’t showed any significant progress.

Quick Summary:

Spotify woes with Music Labels is gone(except with TIPS).

Youtube Music has turned tides around.

Jio Saavn is fighting long and hard.

Apple Music, now works perfectly fine on Android Devices.

Still to meet someone who uses Wynk.

Amazon Music is okay for the persons who uses Amazon Prime Video and isn’t a music enthusiast as they only listen to what they want to listen. For them, listening music is a “passive” activity.

To understand it, we need to take a dive into them based on these 5 factors:

Audience Attention

Engagement Depth

Growth Stage

Usage Stickiness

User Monetization

Audience Attention

Audience Attention means desire and expectation for your content, information and/or data in the mind of your users.

Engagement Depth

Engagement Depth is the extent of the relationship a customer has with a brand. It can be strengthened — or diminished — with every interaction. From making a purchase to writing a review to joining a loyalty program, the depth of customer engagement increases and becomes more mutually beneficial the more closely a brand can connect with a customers’ preferences.

Growth Stage

Growth Stage is the second stage in product life cycle (PLC). In the growth stage, the products growth, sales, revenue and profits are on the rise. In the growth stage, the company’s emphasis is not only on recovering the costs incurred in the introduction phase but also on generating profits.

Usage Stickiness

Usage Stickiness is an informal measure of how well a brand resonates with consumers, including both quantifiable and quantitative attributes.

User Monetization

User monetization is how a user base can be leveraged into a way to earn money from the app. The strategies for accomplishing this are varied, as there are paid apps, in-app purchases, advertising, and other options.

Final observations:

Gaana

“Mighty” of Indian music scene.

Exclusive rights of Indian artists and movies (Don’t know how long they can sustain this strategy).

UX and Recommendation still sucks.

Strong financial and marketing support thanks to being a part of “Times Internet”.

JioSaavn

License renewal issues especially for International content.

Indian version of Spotify.

Not extremely good but not that bad also.

Still holding it’s ground against the competition thanks to it’s wonderful UX.

If you are using it, there should be a very strong reason to leave it (see first point).

Apple Music

Sneak peak of Apple’s sophistication and User Experience.

It’s really good if you are already in “Apple Ecosystem”.

“It just works”.

Spotify

God level personalization and recommendation.

Quirky Social Features.

Podcasts (huh, exclusive ones).

User Experience.

Youtube Music

Longest player as music library is just Youtube only.

Removes ads from Youtube as now Youtube is dishing out 2 ads which can’t be skipped before any videos.

Access to all covers: official and unofficials.

Typical Google’s failure in how to build a good social product.