Hungama Music is another Indian streaming service closing its doors
First Resso, then Wynk, it’s now Hungama Music closing down. Are market giants simply unbeatable?
Hungama Music notified its users that it would be shutting down its streaming service tomorrow (April 15th), as spotted by Music Ally. What does this mean? The music-dedicated branch of Hungama Digital Media (recently Hungama OTT) will stop operating, and “downloaded music and library” content will no longer be available.
This is not the first Indian music streaming service to shut up shop in recent years. TikTok parent company, ByteDance’s Resso shut down in January 2024 after just three years of operation. Later that same year, Wynk Music, owned by Bharti Airtel, closed its doors as well.
Hungama Music – a RouteNote partner until last year – was a website and app that allowed for for free, unlimited access to listen to music or to download songs and music videos in all languages. However, in 2023 it switched to a subscription-only model. Resso made a similar move in 2023, offering only a premium tier in order to improve user experience while offering better monetisation options to artists and labels.
So what gives?
The appetite for music streaming certainly hasn’t slowed in India. In fact, quite the opposite. India shot up the streaming charts to second place, behind the USA in 2023. As Music Ally points out, Hungama was a relatively strong player in the Indian music streaming space. While it never quite managed to amass the same number of listeners as competitors, it was a strong contender for local music.
Gaana and JioSaavn (a RouteNote partner) are both Indian DSPs that remain popular, however major platforms prove to be hard to beat.
YouTube remains the most widely used platform – with an estimated 462 million users – for music consumption in India, largely due to its free access and vast content library. Spotify’s global reach is evident in India, as it’s the streaming platform with the most paid subscribers (approx 3 million paid users). And of course Apple Music has grown its presence in India significantly through strategic partnerships, such as with previously mentioned Airtel (of Wynk Music).
These global giants have the reputation, revenue, and sway to attract more and more users while offering free and paid tiers. With a focus on extensive bundling and the provision of exclusive content, can local DSPs make subscriptions in both pricing and packaging attractive enough to users to avoid further closures?
