Spotify are preparing to launch in India bringing the world’s biggest streaming service to the world’s biggest country at a prime time. 

It’s not long until Spotify make their long-awaited launch in India. Last month during their annual presentation, Daniel Ek said: “We are working on launching in some of the biggest markets in the world, places like India, Russia, and Africa which has a very rich musical culture.”

The music streaming leaders will be entering their biggest territory yet but it’s also home to many of their Western rivals and India has a strong presence of it’s own established music streamers. India’s own Saavn is the country’s top streamer and has established partnerships with Amazon as well as recently partnering with another big Indian streamer, JioMusic, which gives them a massive precedent over other streamers in the country.

Spotify’s influence and well built service could convert people over from Saavn and Western streamers like Google Play Music and Amazon which have launched there already. Whilst Spotify may be late to the party in India their country is still rife with piracy and have very few people on streaming services, though that is slowly changing as they catch up to legally provided digital music.

Spotify could find a big audience via their smartphone apps offering unlimited music streaming on the go. India have embraced Smartphones massively and are now the second-largest smartphone market in the world. Thanks to this there is a massive audience for on-the-go services, and Spotify could take advantage of that to get people listening on their phones.

Spotify already have a significant lead on rival streaming services with 70 million subscribers and then even more listening on Freemium. There is a massive potential audience for them in India however setting themselves apart from the crowd will be hard, especially with the number of established music services in India already. As the country wakes up more to the streaming revolution and moves away from piracy Spotify should be able to make a mark.