This month marks Spotify’s five years in India, the audio streaming platform’s 79th market in the world. Since launch, the brand has focused on growing the country’s audio creator community, localising for users, and making streaming the default way for listeners to discover and consume music and podcasts.
Through localisation of product features, Premium plans, playlist curation, brand campaigns, and on-ground experiences, Spotify has more than doubled in its brand love metric since January 2020 till date, currently at an all-time high of 77%, and is the most loved audio streaming brand in India. This is led by, but not limited to, Gen Z and millennials. Given that they also form the largest listener cohort on Spotify in the market, 400+ brands have advertised on the platform since its launch here.
Over the last five years, Spotify has also deeply invested in educating the artist community on how to make the most of Spotify For Artists, a platform that empowers artists and their management to analyse how their music is being consumed. Today, 28,000+ artists from India use Spotify For Artists, up 2x from last year. That’s not all. Spotify in India has pivoted from nearly 70% international music streaming at launch, to more than 70% local music streaming today. In addition, the consumption of music from India has grown globally, with 85% year-on-year growth in 2023 alone.
The highest growth came from countries such as Brazil, Turkey, Italy, Canada, the UK, and Australia, with more than 100% increase in consumption since 2019.
The growth in consumption spans several local languages, with Malayalam being the fastest growing for music consumption worldwide, at growth of over 5300%, followed by Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, and Hindi.
Year after year, Indian artists found listeners in more countries across the globe, with the most exported artists being A.R. Rahman, Alka Yagnik, Anirudh Ravichander, AP Dhillon, and Arijit Singh. In fact, Arijit Singh is the third most followed artist on Spotify, worldwide.
Spotify’s editorial playlists from India have also grown exponentially worldwide, led by Punjabi music. Hot Hits Punjabi witnessed the highest increase at 10,000%, while Punjabi 101 grew at 1400%, followed by Hot Hits Hindi and Bollywood Mush.
Spotify has also deeply invested in the podcast industry. Through Spotify Podcasters’ Day and regional creator support programs, podcasters learned about the ease of making their own podcasts on Spotify For Podcasters. As a result 2,00,000+ podcasts were created using the platform in 2023. In terms of consumption, podcast listening in India increased significantly across several genres, from history and education, to mythology and true crime.
History podcasts saw the highest growth in terms of percentage, at over 1000% growth, while mythology and spirituality continued to be the most listened to category, followed by education podcasts, especially those around self-help and personal finance. The kids and family genre saw significant growth, too, as did true crime, and news.
In 2023, four of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify in India were of the mythology / spirituality genre, including the most-streamed podcast of 2023, with the genre growing by >80% through the year.
In 2024 and beyond, the focus for Spotify in India will remain focused on contributing to the success of artists locally and globally, especially in the world of film and I-Pop fandom, and enabling podcasters to find the best ways to create and monetize content creation. It will also continue providing the best opportunities for brands to advertise on the platform to music fans and podcast listeners (Spotify Audience Network), launching new features that make Spotify more personalised, and making Premium more accessible and relevant for India.
