[Update: 27 February 2019 @ 18:00 GMT]
Hot off the Bollywood wagon, Spotify has just announced that they’re now officially available in India. Given the size of the market, they wouldn’t just launch and let it run the path. They’ve gone further with some exclusive custom-built experiences for music listeners to cover the breadth of music:
- Multi-language music recommendations: Many Indians speak several local languages, so Spotify’s music recommendation engine can now be tuned to Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. Indian users can select their preferred language(s) to receive tailored Daily Mix, Home, Radio, and Search results and recommendations.
- Spotify Free with full control: For the first time on Spotify Free, smartphone users can play every song on demand.
- Playlists made for India: Our new playlists, expertly curated and regularly updated by our team of Indian music experts, include Indiestan, Rap 91, Namaste Love, Punjabi101, andBollywood Butter, as well as Top Hits in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi.
- Spotify goes to the movies: Introducing Starring…, a series of playlists featuring the best music from the most popular Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, and Punjabi actors. Spotify’s recommendations will also include songs from India’s favorite movies and actors.
- City playlists: Find out what’s hot in each city, with new algorithmic playlists tracking what’s trending in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangaluru, and Chennai.
This brings the grand total of the Spotify listening network to 79 countries across the world. Time to Bhangra round the clock!
It’s only been about three months since Spotify officially launched in the Middle East and North Africa region. Though the region’s focus has been to bring in more Arab music to their streaming library, you can’t forget another diaspora that represents one of the largest markets in the world. I’m talking about the millions of Indians who are residing in the Middle East and North Africa region.
They’re about to get a taste of Desi music from home – Spotify has officially announced that more than 160,000 Bollywood and Indian regional music tracks from T-Series has been added to its growing streaming library.
The entire T-Series library is filled with Bollywood and regional movie soundtracks, accompanied with albums from established and emerging artists. From your Bollywood favourites to the Bhangra hits, along with many other songs in regional languages, the T-Series library is already available to their users worldwide. Just like they did for the Middle East and North Africa region with the Global Cultures Initiative, Spotify has also updated their Desi Hub with the T-Series catalogue.
Adding Bollywood music from one of the largest music labels in India can’t be a coincidence. This could all be leading up to Spotify’s official launch in India near the end of January 2019, as reported by Variety. However, they’ll be facing local competitors (Saavn, Gaana, Hungama) and other global names (Apple Music and Google Play Music) who already have a head-start in the market. Having Bollywood music readily available combined with their global library will definitely serve to entice users to their service.
On another note, this announcement may also reignite the T-Series and PewDiePie battle of being YouTube’s most subscribed channel.
