Will the Titans in the Market Sideline the Small Players of Indian Music Streaming Industry?
The fight to establish the early leadership in the growing segment among the titans has clearly come under the spotlight
By Komal Nathani •
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Since a few days, the Indian music streaming industry has created an abuzz in the market.
India's richest industrialist, Mukesh Ambani is now betting high to grab a bigger piece of the music streaming industry's pie.
The Ambani-led flagship company Reliance Industries Ltd. signed a deal to merge JioMusic with the New York-based digital music app Saavn to create one of the largest streaming services in the world.
In a statement issued by the company, the Director of Reliance Jio Inforcomm Ltd, Akash Ambani has said, "We are delighted to announce this partnership with Saavn, and believe that their highly experienced management team will be instrumental in expanding Jio-Saavn to an extensive user base, thereby strengthening our leadership position in the Indian streaming market."
The competition has become fierce in the already crowded Indian music streaming industry. The industry now seems to be divided between titans at one side like Amazon Prime Music, Google Play, Apple Music, Times Internet's Gaana, Airtel's Wynk and the small players like Hungama, Saregama Classical, Shazam and Raaga on the other.
The deal has come at a time when the international streaming giant Spotify had announced its entry into the Indian market a few days ago. The Swedish company, which has its presence in 65 countries had also revealed that the company has already hired employees and opened an office in India.
Before that, the Times-led Gaana has announced its funding of USD 115-million from the Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent.
On Feb 28, 2018, the e-commerce giant Amazon had launched its digital music streaming app Amazon Prime Music in India, which already has its presence in USA since 2014.
The rising penetration of internet and the massive consumption of online music streaming has put the Indian music streaming industry on the global map. According to the Statista, the revenue of 'music streaming' segment amounts to USD 101 million in 2018, which is expected to go up by an annual growth rate of CAGR 3.8 per cent by the 2022.
A report published by FICCI-KPMG in 2017 said that the streaming audio contributed more than 10 per cent to the total internet usage in India. The report also mentioned that the digital music now generates 70 per cent of music industry's 1200 crore-odd revenue annually.
The fight to establish the early leadership in the growing segment among the titans has clearly come under the spotlight. But will this growing number of titans fade off the future of small players in the industry is yet to see.
