MUMBAI: The talks of Spotify entering the Indian market have been going around for almost a year.  The company has brought space in the financial capital of India, Mumbai; hired top management to get the working started. However, the deal still is on holds, as most of the music labels have not given licenses to Spotify. Regarded as the best recommendation engines, the Swedish company has been planning their expansion meticulously. Their expansion in other countries has been successful, but the success for India eludes them.  

Amidst their global plans, the company tallied their subscriber base with over 200 mn subscribers in rest of the world, at the end of 2018. In November, the company had shared that they have an active subscriber base of over 191 million with 87 million being paid subscribers and rest 107 million being free subscribers. This means in the next two months, the company saw a rise of nine million subscribers. The paid subscriber base is one the major hurdles that the company might face in India, as the Indian population isn’t used to paid entertainment. Furthermore, the clutter in the music streaming market with multiple payers giving attractive schemes to their customers and lowering the prices of data will make things possibly more difficult in India for Spotify.

This, however, isn’t a concern for the company as shared by the Global Head of Communications and Public Relations Dustee Jenkins in an interview. Their bigger concern, than paid subscribers, is the long-pending global expansion plans. Dustee emphasized that as much as profits are important, reaching out to every region in the world is important. She also shared that there are still many regions in the USA itself, where Spotify isn’t used to its optimum. At a recent CES event, the company also shared that they are more interested in focusing on Podcasts as they see more potential in that zone.