200 million people are streaming music in India
Music streaming is quickly becoming massive in India as more and more go online to get their music from music streaming services.
India is a huge country, the second most populous in the world in fact. So there was always going to be a massive impact when the almost 1.5 billion people who live there picked up on the music streaming trend.
As native services like Gaana and JioSaavn grow and Western streaming services like Spotify increase their presence in the region the numbers have jumped in recent years. Their latest figures show that there are now 200 million people in India listening to music on streaming services.
Gaana in particular are seeing incredible growth, having announced last week that they now have 150 million total users. What’s even more amazing is how quickly they are growing, having reported that they’d reached 125 million less than 2 months earlier.
Indians love music both from their own culture and music from around the world that gets imported. It’s only natural that a country with such a large uptake in technology and a deep love for music would get into music streaming. It will be interesting to see how quickly music services continue to grow in the next year in India.
Whilst lots of people are using music streaming services in India, not many seem willing to pay yet. Times Internet CEO Gautam Sinha said that, whilst Gaana may have a massive 150 million users, only around 2 million people are paying for the premium Gaana+ service.
It looks like, at least for now, whilst people love music streaming in India they would much rather put up with adverts than pay for a smoother experience.
But that could easily change; Music services in the West have been working hard to convert free listeners into paying ones. Spotify have been promoting their Premium service heavily to great results and YouTube now offers ad-free music for a monthly fee.
So perhaps in a few years of music streaming booming in the country, we’ll see the same shift towards paying for it. In any case, it’s certain that music streaming in India is only going to become more massive than it already quickly has.