Spotify finds crowded Indian music streaming market hard to crack

Even while Spotify is “very pleased with the results” in India as it hit 2 million-user mark since its launch around two months back, the world’s leading music streaming service said that there will be ‘some’ challenges in scaling its ad revenue in India and in Asia. Spotify is the latest to join the crowded music streaming market in India and compete with the likes of Apple Music, YouTube Music, Gaana, JioSaavn etc.

The challenges will be “in keeping pace with the growth from a revenue perspective because those markets just simply don’t have as developed an ad market as we have here in the U.S,” said Barry McCarthy, CFO, Spotify in Q1 2019 earnings call with analysts on Monday.

Moreover, Spotify’s reach in India and other new markets will be relatively small initially until it has a critical mass and has “reached the attractiveness of the platform to advertisers as relentlessly true in the United States as well,” McCarthy said. The transcript of the call is available at seekingalpha.com.