Digital music service Spotify, after nearly two years since its last country launch in Asia has announced on Tuesday that it has plans to go live in Indonesia by the end of March. The company also seems to be taking its Asian expansion seriously and will continue with potential targets including India and Japan.
Spotify initially landed on countries like Hong Kong and Singapore when it first came to Asia. These countries were smaller and widely influenced by the western side making them easy targets for the music company. Now however, the tech giant is seemingly trying to pitch off its service into much larger and populous regions.
Most Asian countries are home to mobile-first or mobile-only users which could be an amazing market for an app like Spotify. The only challenge the company might have to face is monetization as Asia is less developed when it comes to paying for digital content and piracy reigns supreme.
The company’s latest announcement about could lead to a lot of growth. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world with more than 250 million people residing there. The smartphone sales in the country are projected to grow by 20 percent this year.
There were reports earlier in October last year that stated that Spotify was planning launches in Indonesia and Japan. The company has been quietly working its way into Tokyo. The company is now hiring for 12 roles in Japan including telling positions like head of consumer marketing, head of communications, social media marketing manager, which stands to show the launch soon to come.
Not just this, it seems the music service has its eyes trained towards India as a future target. It seems to be like the logical thing to do since it offers a free version of its service and has a more robust Android app which are both essential in the subcontinent.
