Product adoption life cycle for Music streaming services in India

7 min readApr 13, 2021

With right music, either you forget everything or you remember everything

Online music streaming provided people to listen more music as compared to audio listening by purchasing physical devices likes tapes, CDs, DVDs etc. Music streaming provided easy access of music on internet. People used to get many benefits in terms of variety, convenience, choice and more importantly on-demand music via voice command on Alexa, Siri, Google platforms. India’s audio streaming market is dominated by Gaana, JioSaavn, Wynk Music, Spotify (15%), Amazon Prime Music, Google Play Music etc.

Where does it lie in the product adoption curve?

**Where exactly music streaming services in India lies in product adoption curve**

At present in India, Music streaming services got stuck in between Early adopters & Early Majority as moreover early adopters like students, youngsters, working people, Urban living people are satisfied with content, variety and availability of music over internet BUT Early majority people wants something which is very significant which resolve their pain points of selecting the audio tracks from huge library in un-availability of internet services.

Profiles of product adopters

According to statistics, music streaming services have crossed the initial stages of innovators and early adopters and falls in early majority bracket of Product Adoption Curve.

Innovators are most willing to take risk. E.g continuously researching on apps, streaming platforms and quickly download beta versions of music streaming apps when available for beta testing. Music Artists, Record Labels, Production Houses would all fall under this category as it is imperative to get as much International/Localized content on the platform. These apps will only succeed if the users find the music they are looking for.

Early Adopters are most influential segment. They are closely followers of innovators. E.g. eople who have used the same/similar service before, Technology lovers who are passionate to explore, and music might fall under this segment as they would probably be the most eager and excited to get their hands on the product.

Early Majority are having average social status and who are influenced by reviews and recommendations from Early Adopters. E.g. People from the general music listening population that own a smartphone, are probably frustrated with traditional means of listening to music (downloading and transferring from various sources), who are open to trying something new. They may or may not have received feedback from the earlier segments of consumers.

Late Majority are skeptical nature people as they still skeptical about GO-NOGO decision. Waiting for get complete performance reviews. For e.g.These are people who are skeptical about the service and/or its features, do not immediately see the value in paying for such apps, taken a long time to switch over to a smartphone or understand the concept behind the service. Skeptical about the risks of online subscriptions.

Laggards are last one to adopt. Moreover wait for next release/version which has more benefits. For e.g. Do i really wanted to spend on Spotify membership. People generally in the 50–60+ age group who prefer traditional means of listening to music via radio, TV, CD’s, Cassettes and are generally averse to new technology. They are very unlikely to use the service unless circumstantially forced to do so.

**I cant go without a day without listening to music**

Factors and challenges which affected the rate of music streaming service adoption.

Piracy: Piracy rates in India are still significantly high. As a result, consumers are used to free access to music and are hesitant to switch to such services.
Advertisements: Too many ads and promotional content to generate revenue on music streaming apps. Consumers are unwilling to listen those ads as those disturbing music listening flow.
Willingness to pay: There are a number of factors that affect the consumer’s willingness to pay for music streaming services in India: For example Subscription Models in India are a fairly new phenomenon, digital payments have fairly recently been on the rise and many consumers are still skeptical and lack the confidence to make digital payments due to security concerns. Also, Access to sources of privacy negates the need for the consumer to switch over / pay for such services.
Content Variety: India is a diverse country with many languages, genres, and music tastes. This makes personalization and localization among the top areas for growth for music streaming services. If people do not find what they are looking for they will churn and look elsewhere.
Data & Connectivity: While major areas in all tier 1 and select tier 2 cities are well connected with 4G technology major parts of India still lack fast internet access which is crucial for the effectiveness of such a service. Additionally, the cost of data has been on the decline in the last couple of years which should gradually help push the adoption of such services in India if there is a significant improvement in the service quality and internet infrastructure.
Moving beyond music if necessary:- Moving from music to videos or books or games to sustain.
Rise in Competitions:The rise in the music-streaming industry will enable more opportunities in the industry with more benefits and better subscription plans. This creates a definite competition among the same channel which may affect the growth and sales of the companies.
Video streaming platforms: Youtube, Dailymotion plays a key factor and challenges these music service providers as most of Indians are still into video streaming. This challenges the music revenue system heavily in India.

Growth and product adoption comparison with other music streaming services

Apart from Spotify making 15 acquisitions around the world, No other startups have made recent Acquisitions.

**Top Five free Music streaming apps in India**

Hacks for growth

Personalization and a curate list of playlists, users now don’t need to search for songs of a particular genre or an artist, they can use predefined playlists available

Considering the price-sensitive Indian audience, a free model similar to its local arch-rivals offering ad-free subscription service and ad-supporting free service.

Localisation is a core focus area i.e. say for an example playlist of specific actor or an actress etc

A voice assistance service powered by Google’s text-to-speech allows users to search and play music or playlists based on singers/ actors/ mood/time of day and more.

Summary

Conclusively, as music streaming adoption grows in India the streaming services face a huge challenge of crossing the chasm from the early adopter phase to the early majority phase. With the vast number of choices available out there its really comes down to how these services innovate and employ various growth hacks to increase their market share.

Frankly speaking, music streaming services have already penetrated the Indian market very well and people have adopted practices to listen to music via online music providers like Spotify, JioSaavn, Gaana, Youtube Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google Music with free as well as paid subscriptions. Now, the companies have to figure out a way to improve the customer experience and at the same time generate revenue from their existing revenue model. Over time, consumers get comfortable with apps and the user experience and familiarity is a great advantage for the early entrants.

There is still a lot of things needs to be done to capture this market such as building better features, a good catalog, a good support system.
Also, with the rise of AI and ML technologies, incorporating them in the services offered to give a better experience to the users will be one of the biggest growth hacks used by these products.
An outreach towards the remaining segment of customers needs to be done, understanding their needs and their requirements and fulfilling them through technological innovation is needed.

This is Naren signing off .. hope this information is useful… Keep listening to music and be happy always !!!