Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming service launched in India last year and was welcomed by millions of users and, a lawsuit. If you are one of those subscribers, you might have noticed that Spotify India is missing a few songs from its library compared to its counterparts in other countries. That can be credited to the company being sued by Warner Music for “falsely asserting a statutory license”, refusing to let it stream its music on the platform.
However, the dispute has finally ended as Spotify and Warner Chappell signed a global licensing agreement on Tuesday. The lawsuit was booked just a few weeks prior to Spotify’s India launch, trying to inhibit its entry in the country altogether. However, the company launched nonetheless with a limited library and has been growing in numbers ever since.
A spokesperson from Warner Chappell stated that the new deal will “appropriately values our songwriters’ music and expands our licensed partnership with Spotify to include India.”
Spotify is also stoked after the deal and a spokesperson from the company said “In less than a year, millions of Indian listeners have joined Spotify, listening to their favorite artists and songwriters from across the globe. We’re pleased with this agreement, and together with Warner Chappell Music, we look forward to helping songwriters and artists connect with more fans, and for more fans to enjoy and be inspired by their music.”
Spotify has garnered huge success in India, even though its struggling to convert users into paid customers. The company has dropped the price of its monthly plan to $1.4, but has managed to amass only around 800,000 odd paid customers so far. The company has also recently launched a new yearly subscription at Rs. 699. This slow trajectory can be credited to the Indian market being saturated with other platforms like Saavan, Wynk Music and Gaana.com to name a few. The problems are also similar in nature to what Netflix, another US-based streaming platform, faced in India. Netflix has since launched a multitude of custom India plans to take market share.
The company is still optimistic about its future in India though. The subcontinent boasts half a billion active internet users in light of one of the cheapest data rates throughout the world. In fact, according to a report by Cisco, the number of internet users streaming content in India is set to double by 2022.
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