Specialist
Former Associate Director, Brand Solutions at JioSaavn Ltd
Agenda
- Music streaming platform penetration update
- Competitive dynamics across international platforms and local platforms
- Partnership structure between music platforms and song publishers
- Customers’ willingness to pay for music streaming platforms
Questions
1.
What trends should we be monitoring for India’s music streaming market? What has been interesting in Q1 2020 about the platforms and the wider market?
2.
What are your thoughts on the penetration for music streaming platforms? Do you perceive that there’s still a large untapped potential for the music streaming platforms to grow? For the online or mobile players in India, I think it’s around at least 300 or 400 million.
3.
You mentioned that there are different strategies between metro and rural for the music platforms. For metro, it’s more about subscriptions that they can gain a recurring revenue, while in rural, it’s more into the advertising-based model. Do you think that the pricing model will be different when they tap into different cities, or they would be the same, but just focused on other strategies?
4.
What is the split the between metro and rural users? What is the difference in their spending?
5.
Are urban users paying for the music streaming? What’s the average spend on music streaming?
6.
When could the paying proportion of the rural or regional music streaming user base match the 10- 20% of urban users?
7.
Can you map out the market shares and dynamics for the Indian local players, JioSaavn, Gaana? What about the international players such as Apple Music, Spotify and ByteDance Resso? How are they positioned?
8.
Do you think that the international players are more focused on metro users rather than regional users? It seems that Jio and Gaana are trying to tap into more the local players or the regional users.
9.
Have local players used their branding to appeal to regional users compared to the international players? Saavn and Gaana’s regional shares are significant. Do players such as Spotify or Apple Music offer any Hindi or regional songs?
10.
How loyal are users to a certain platform, such as Gaana, Saavn or Spotify or Apple Music?
11.
Do you think that these four platforms, the two local ones and the two international ones, will directly compete in the future?
12.
Do predict a big publisher holding all of the copyrights, and how would Saavn or Gaana work with them to collect those songs?
13.
How does the contract structure work? Is it a fixed sum per quarter or per month? Is it a future-based model for the music platforms to pay the copyright or the licence to the music label company?
14.
Have you noticed platforms trying to buy less content or trying to focus on a niche label to avoid these kind of costs? I think it’s quite costly for music streaming platforms to maintain their operations.
15.
Given the high cost, do you expect that music streaming platforms are trying to acquire more song content? Are there any strategies for acquiring content or are they just grabbing as many songs as they can?
16.
Do you think that there’s a lot of ad inventory in music platforms? I think some of the popular music contributes most to the advertising revenue. We can start with the CPM advertising model first, because it can reach the largest audience.
17.
Do you think music platforms can increase the CPM for the advertisers, or is it becoming more price- sensitive? You mentioned cost per spot is around INR 0.25. Do you expect a further decline for the cost per spot for all platforms, Gaana, Saavn and Spotify?
18.
Can we end by stating your outlook on music platforms’ subscription monetisation opportunities?
