The much-awaited launch of the Spotify music streaming service in India, has finally happened.
The world’s largest music streaming service, is now available across all the platforms in India. As it is globally, Spotify is available here with an ad-supported free subscription tier, as well as premium tiers. For India, Spotify is currently focusing on English and Hindi music, as well as Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
If you wish to sign up for one of the premium subscription packs, you can choose to start off with the 30-day free trial post which you have to pay Rs 119 per month for full access to all the music and the premium features in the app. There is also the option of doing a pre-paid sign-up to Premium for specific durations. If you wish to access Spotify Premium for 1 day, it will cost you Rs 13.
A week-long premium subscription is priced at Rs 39, a monthly subscription is priced at Rs 129, its Rs 389 for 3 months, Rs 719 for 6 months and Rs 1189 for an year.
Interesting to note that you can only sign up for the free-trial, if you choose to pay with your Mastercard or Visa credit or debit card but can select the other duration prepaid options for Premium, via Paytm or UPI modes.
You would have to subscribe to Spotify Premium if you wish to get access to some premium-only features such as very high-quality music streaming, no restrictions on number of skips, no advert interruptions and the ability to download music for offline play. However, the free subscription option still offers access to the entire library of music BUT remains ad-supported and restricted.
“India has an incredibly rich music culture and to best serve this market, we’re launching a custom-built experience. Not only will Spotify bring Indian artists to the world, we’ll also bring the world’s music to fans across India. Spotify’s music family just got a whole lot bigger.”
Daniel Ek, Spotify founder and CEO
Amidst a great reception from the audience and the artists, Spotify also faced a setback while proceeding for their launch, from Warner Music Group. There were reports of Warner Music Group filing an injunction against Spotify in the country.
The two have been at odds about their licensing deal and the injunction now bars Spotify from their music library, locking them out from the rights to over one million songs. Spotify claims that this is ‘abusive behaviour’ on Warner’s part in order to leverage a better deal.
Warner told Variety that ‘they had no choice’ since Spotify ‘abruptly changed course’. While Spotify is continuing to weigh their options, its licensing deals with the Universal Music Group, Sony Music and T-Series have been finalized, which is why Spotify has decided to go ahead with the official launch in India.
