Product Case Study: Usage of music streaming apps in India
Disclaimer: All the stories I share are my own hypothesis. I do not intend to harm or object any person, product, job, or community; intentionally or otherwise. Hope you enjoy a good read!
With the increasing number of music streaming applications in India, I always wondered whether Indian users would prefer to use in-house Gaana or JioSaavn, or international products like Spotify or SoundCloud, whether they would use the basic (free) version or subscribe to a premium version. I am personally an avid follower of the music streaming space and keep myself posted on the latest features and advancements that follow.
To gain some insight on the user behaviour and these apps usage, I decided to survey a group of people of all ages who use these apps frequently and could provide some meaningful information.
Below is the summarised data I received (thanks to Google),
Using the data I received and my own research, I went ahead and created a feature table of some selected apps that is specific to the Indian audience to gain further insight (I had to include SoundCloud in the table and exclude Amazon Music because SoundCloud is globally most used app to stream music after Spotify and people commonly use Amazon Music only if they have Prime Subscription).
Let’s take each app in the decreasing order of their usage and try to understand user behaviour.
Spotify
Needless to say, Spotify has won by a huge margin compared to any other competitor. Ever since Spotify launched in India, people have switched to Spotify and stayed for good. Spotify perspicuously understood what Indian audience needs — ease of use, content, music discovery, and personalization and they excelled at everything. During their initial launch in India, most of the Indian content was missing, but as viral theory suggests, people still kept using Spotify, and over time Indian content at Spotify has grown huge, such that they are coming with their own Spotify Originals podcasts for India to embrace and re-establish storytelling and listening culture.
The pricing model of Spotify is also impressive. With affordable plans to cater to users of every type, they have established themselves quite well. Out of 38 users who responded Yes in [Chart 2], 21 of them were using Spotify premium, winning in yet another category.
Spotify is one of the very few companies to release their product on all platforms — Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Linux, Chromebook and Windows Mobile. \o/
Talking about the areas where it can improve, Spotify lacks flexibility in supporting independent artists and most of the new artists have to get themselves a distributor to get featured. Moreover, new users who try Spotify and do not find the music they are looking for, get disappointed, so Indian content is also another area where Spotify needs to grow.
Update as of July 2020:
[1] Spotify has released time-synched, on-screen lyrics after Apple Music and Gaana for 26 markets including India.
[2] Spotify has introduced ‘Premium Duo’ plan at ₹149, which includes two premium accounts.
Personal rating: 9/10
YouTube Music
After Spotify, users’ second-most choice is YouTube Music. YT Music was launched by Google as a subset of YouTube which only includes music videos. They took all the good parts of YouTube (content, recommendation, playlists), mixed it with curated personalized playlists, and made YouTube Music which makes it,
a) user-friendly
b) easily adaptable
c) intuitive
The biggest area where YouTube Music lacks is the support of podcasts. Google launched https://podcasts.google.com/ but we all know users won’t use two apps when they can have it in one. As of now, Google has no intention to support podcasts in YT Music which can limit the areas it can grow.
Personal rating: 8/10
JioSaavn
After Jio realised their app, JioMusic is no good, they made a very sound investment in Saavn and they are growing rapidly in the Indian market. Backed by Jio, Saavn has gained immense attention from users and with the Make in India initiative, more and more users are switching to JioSaavn and Gaana.
JioSaavn might not have flexible payment options, but they have something called “Pro rewards”, which basically provides JioSaavn Pro users with vouchers for other products like Puma, edX etc.
JioSaavn can improve their payment structure especially to attract the young generation by introducing exclusive plans for students. Apart from this, there is no time-synched lyrics feature, which Gaana, Apple Music and with the latest update Spotify supports as well. While users can enjoy on-screen lyrics with https://www.musixmatch.com/, but let’s cut to the chase, no one wants to install another app to support an additional feature (unless you’re me and a music aficionado).
Personal rating: 7.5/10
Gaana
Ever since Make in India initiative has risen, Gaana has seen immense growth in user base, content and new features. Gaana is in a “cut-throat competition” with JioSaavn to become the #1 in-house music app, which as of now can be anyone’s game.
Talking about its features, Gaana is one of the very few music streaming apps, that has introduced music videos within their app by the name “Gaana Videos”, which might be in an early stage but is still quite promising.
They have introduced “Gamification” in the music streaming space with virtual coins that a user receives after he/she completes a set of milestone(s). These virtual coins can then be redeemed with the in-app vouchers for other companies which is better than JioSaavn’s pro rewards since Gaana doesn’t ask the user to buy Gaana Plus subscription to earn and redeem coins, therefore “getting the user hooked up”.
They introduced time-synched, on-screen lyrics long before anyone else, therefore, eliminating the need for an additional app to view lyrics.
They even have the “Buzz” tab that delivers entertainment-related articles and facts.
While Gaana is fully loaded with a ton of features, there is no support for independent artists, so if you like to listen to rising talent, Gaana isn’t the platform you are looking for.
Personal rating: 8.5/10
Wynk Music
Wynk Music was once off the charts with its content and the ability to download and listen to songs offline even without a premium subscription but then Reliance Jio came in the market, and most of us had access to the internet most of the time and streaming music became the new normal. Wynk Music is still the only app in the Indian market that allows you to download songs without paying, at least to some extent.
Looking closely at [Chart 3], Spotify, Gaana and JioSaavn after checking Wynk Music’s pricing:
Needless to say, Wynk Music subscription is not worth it provided the features it offers. With limited content, average UI/UX and no extra features, Wynk stands in no competition in the long term. But still, if we look at [Chart 1], 23% of people use Wynk Music. I think they still prefer to download and listen to songs offline to save data usage.
In my opinion, if Wynk needs to stay in the competition in the music streaming space, they need to come up with groundbreaking features, increase the quality and content and rework on the pricing strategy.
Personal rating: 6/10
SoundCloud
Coming to the last one in the feature table, SoundCloud is considered as the biggest competitor to Spotify. There is still an ongoing debate of which is better and everyone has their own opinion. SoundCloud is itself very collaborative in nature and it is the best platform for individual artists who want to get themselves heard. They also have the comment feature, where users can comment at a specific timestamp for any song, which could be a great feature but turned out to be just another space for spam. I am not even sure how SoundCloud is managing the costs of storing useless data.
SoundCloud Go+ is still not released in India or in any other Asian country in particular (Source: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003453007-SoundCloud-Go-availability), so it is obvious they are currently focusing on growing in the European, American and Oceania market.
SoundCloud may be the oldest and still popular music app worldwide but it sure has to pull out all the stops to compete with the ever-growing competition.
Personal rating: 7/10
Conclusion
It is quite obvious that Spotify is currently India’s #1 grossing music streaming app among people of all ages. (I even made my parents install it and they managed to make playlists, browse songs and listen to their favourite podcasts on their own, even though their technical intellect is very limited).
With the recent rise in #MakeInIndia initiative, Gaana and JioSaavn can take first-mover advantage and boost their marketing in India.
However, concluding this article, we can understand one thing about the current user behaviour for this space:
1. intuitive and sleek UI/UX
2. content
3. discovery and recommendations
4. quality of music
These are the three key factors users are looking out for. Some apps are trying to hook up users with gamification, rewards etc. and I am excited to see how that turns out.
