Product Adoption Lifecycle for Music Streaming Services in India
What is a Music Streaming App?
A music streaming app is an application where one can listen to music on demand. A user is not required to download & save the song on the device to listen to the music (though he/she can do it to listen to the music offline). But, internet connectivity is a necessity as the music is streamed in realtime.
The emergence of Music Streaming
The convenience of not needing to carry a separate physical device or to download songs to be able to listen later and provision to access humongous music catalog are some of the factors that contributed to the growth of music streaming.
Music Streaming in India
India is one of the most inexpensive countries in terms of the average cost of 1GB data. The availability of cheap data by mobile server providers has resulted in an increasing number of people, even in rural areas, using smartphones. This directly resulted in the number of people using freemium music streaming apps.
According to Blaise Fernandes, CEO of the Indian Music Industry, there are around 200 million unique users and according to Statista, there are around 47.3 million active paying users in India. Currently, India ranks 8th in Global Digital Media Revenue Ranking.
Amazon Prime Music, Youtube Music, Gaana, Spotify, Jio-Saavn, Wynk, Apple Music, Hungama Music are some of the dominant apps in the segment. Companies like Amazon, Jio & Google provide bundled services with a single subscription providing more value for the customers. This might also help in the growth of the industry. For ex: Amazon offers Amazon Prime Videos, Faster Deliveries, Amazon Prime Music & many more with a single subscription.
Product Adoption Lifecycle Curve
A product when launched seldom attracts all the users in a single go. It is adopted gradually by people over time depending on psychological & demographical traits. These users can be grouped into Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards. Companies, usually, understand this and plan their marketing activities accordingly. Let us look deeply into each of these groups.
Innovators: These are the first group of people that are likely to adopt any product. They want to be the first to adopt a new technology or product as they are genuinely interested in new technology or product. Usually, they are not willing to pay a lot for new products and are constantly looking for deals. However, winning them over is crucial nonetheless, as they can serve as a test group and their endorsement reassures the other customers. They are typically younger in age.
Early Adopters: Like Innovators, Early Adopters adopt new technologies or products very early. They are younger in age and are visionaries. They are not price-sensitive and they do not look for improvements but for a revolutionary breakthrough. Consequently, they are willing to take high risks and can act as an ambassador for your product or service.
Early Majority: The “mainstream market” starts off with the “Early Majority”. For any product or service to be successful it is important for the company to win over the mainstream market. They are pragmatic & usually wait for other people to use the product before trying it. Many companies fail to win over the Early Majority group eventually leading to their downfall.
Late Majority: They are similar to the Early Majority in many cases except they wait for the product to be a leader in the industry. They are reluctant to transit to the new product or service until it has become the industry standard. One needs to be a market leader in order to win over this segment.
Laggards: These people do not want anything to do with the new technology. These skeptics strongly believe that new technologies rarely fulfill their promises. However, laggards can provide deep insights into the discrepancies between your sales claims and the actual product. They are usually old in age.
Music Streaming services in India fall under the Early Majority section of the Product Adoption Curve.
Factors & Challenges which affected the rate of music streaming service adoption
Piracy: The music industry is still battling the age-old problem of piracy. In India, around 76% of internet users surveyed admitted to accessing musical content through pirated means. Illegal P2P (peer-2-peer) apps, stream-ripping websites & infringing websites in India & neighboring countries result in losses of US$250M annually to the music recording industry.
Pricing: Kashyap Deorah in his book — The Golden Tap: The Inside Story of Hyper-Funded Indian Startup, states “Indian consumers love convenience as long as they don’t have to pay for it. They will live with the pain of the slight inconvenience of getting things from the alternate source if it saves them money.”
I completely agree with him on the above and it is evident in the fact that a very low percentage of people who are using music streaming apps are premium users. Adding to it, companies like JioSaavn & Gaana have dropped subscription charges by a whopping 70%.
Unhealthy Competition: The music streaming industry is crowded with competitors — both local & international heavyweights. They are fighting for a pie in the already price-sensitive industry. Sooner, we can see more consolidation happening in the industry, which has already begun through Jio Music & Saavn merger.
Growth and product adoption comparison with other music streaming services
Growth Hacks
Tackling Piracy: Piracy is an age-old problem for the Indian Music Industry. The problem with piracy is its lack of awareness amongst people about what piracy is and why it is wrong. Educating customers about how avoiding the use of pirated content help the budding artists would far outweigh the pinch of paying a few bucks for the content.
Integrating Social Tools: People are more interested in knowing what their friends are listening to. Enabling the users to know about their peers’ activities would help curb piracy too.
Tweaking the Freemium Model: Aggressively pushing ads and in-app purchases are annoying to the user. Instead of forcing them to buy premium, the providers can include video ads within the app. These video ads are completely voluntary to view (after a few secs) and incentivize users who view ads with some benefits (Ex: 5 rs in the wallet for every viewing two 2 min video ads). The amount aggregated can then be used to buy the premium account.
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