Majority of revenues in music streaming in India still from ads: Spotify
- Akshat Harbola, Head of Market Operations, India, Spotify said paid models are gaining traction in the country
- He said majority of the revenues in the streaming music industry are still coming from ad supported models
While there’s been considerable growth in streaming content and OTT platforms in India, streaming is still not a habit, says Akshat Harbola, Head of Market Operations, India, Spotify. Harbola was speaking on a quarterly conference call with the media.
“Our hypotheses when we launched was that streaming had seen tremendous adoption, but it’s not a habit yet in this market. It’s an industry challenge for all the players to make it more of a habit as opposed to consuming pirated content on a smartphone,” Harbola said. “In terms of the split of revenues, majority of the revenues in the streaming music industry are still coming from ad supported models, because just the volumes of that are significantly larger,” he added.
Harbola though continued that paid models are gaining traction and he expects recent moves by the government in improving online payment systems to aid this too.
Streaming platforms have been trying to curb piracy for a while now. In fact, many would argue that they have succeeded to a large extent. “The incentive earlier for pirating music was the difference in price point, a CD was priced at maybe ₹400, while a pirated MP3 came at ₹20. But streaming sites are significantly cheaper, if not entirely free. So while the overall industry size is still smaller than it should be, it is getting some pillars of support even as we anticipate strong enforcement of anti-piracy laws,” said Jahil Thakkar, Partner, Deloitte.
Deloitte and the Indian Music Industry (IMI) announced a report today, titled Economic Impact of the Recorded Music Industry. According to the report, the music streaming industry in India currently generates revenues of ₹270 crore, while the overall music industry in India is valued at ₹1068 crore.
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First Published:3 Sep 2019, 05:34 PM IST
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