Presentation on Marketing Plan of Spotify extending it's services to India created by Abhinav.U, IIT Madras, during a Marketing Internship by Sameer Mathur

1. Extension of Spotify to India
Plan
By Abhinav.U
Marketing

2. Executive Summary:
• Spotify is a leading online music streaming application with over 100
million users worldwide
• A huge milestone as Spotify has it’s presence in only 60 nations in the
world unlike it’s competitors
• This marketing plan is about Spotify extending it’s services to a highly
potential country in terms of India which already has it’s competitors
presence
• The plan suggests ways to attract the target consumers, and the most
efficient way to position, offer and communicate with the target consumer
segments

3. OverviewCompany

4. What is Spotify?

6. Overview:
• Spotify offers over 30 million songs from various genres with a
user-friendly interface
• Users can listen to their favorite artist, album, and discover new
music in an easy manner
• Spotify provides two versions of it’s application – Free and Premium
Subscription
• Premium Subscription is offered to an individual at a price of 9.99$

7. Free Subscription vs Premium Subscription
• Higher audio quality
• An Ad-free experience
• Offline streaming
available
• Lower audio quality
• Songs interrupted by
Advertisements
• Online listening

8. Spotify attains it’s revenue from Advertisements and
Premium Subscriptions
- Revenue distribution of
Spotify from 2012-15

9. Companies Core competencies:

10. 1. User Empowerment
• Spotify offers a wide variety of music to it’s users and
constantly increases its database of songs
• Users can choose from their favorite artist, album or a
particular song
• It also offers a huge variety of playlists to fit the user’s
environment or mood

11. 1. User Empowerment
• It offers the application
Spotify Running where in
music plays in coherence to
the speed of the user
• Spotify allows users to create their own playlists and
share it with the rest of the world

12. 2. Advertising Platform
• Spotify creates a platform for business to share highly
impactful advertisements on the free version of the
application
• These advertisements could be audio clips or just pictures
shown on the application

13. 2. Advertising Platform
• This is a very effective means of communication for firms
as most of the users are forced to listen through the
complete audio clip

14. Market Overview

15. 1. Current Customers:
Spotify is currently
available only in
60 nations around
the world, but
beats its
competitors in
most of these
nations
Countries in which Spotify is available

16. 1. Current Customers:
• Spotify has over 50
million Premium
Subscribers which is
almost twice that of
Apple Music
• It also has a total of
around 130 million
users around the
planet
Total Paid users v/s Time

17. • The age group of 18-24 use
Spotify to a greater extent
compared to the other age
groups
• A significant amount of
revenue hence comes from the
age groups of School and
College students
1. Current Customers:
Age group wise usage – Apr’15

18. 2. Competitors:

19. 2. Competitors:
• Spotify beats most of it’s competitors in terms of the
number of paid subscribers and revenue (SoundCloud
has more users than Spotify)
Spotify Subscribers worldwide
<

20. 3. Opportunities
• Spotify now operates in a very limited section of the world
and will have to expand it’s services to other nations,
especially the Asian continent
• With the growing popularity of Spotify in countries like
India, if marketed in the right way, Spotify is bound to be
successful in this nation as well

21. 4. Threats
• Upon expansion to other nations, Spotify needs to keep in
mind that competitors like Google Play Music and Apple
Music already have a base in these nations, in this case,
India
• Also, since most of the mobile phone users have exposure
to Google Play Music and Apple Music through Android
and iPhone, Spotify has got to provide so much more
value in it’s offering

22. 4. Threats
• A great deal of Piracy is possible when we expand the
product to a nation like India where the practices still
prevail

23. Goal
• The short term goal is to expand the product to India and
ensure that premium subscription increases at a steady
rate
• To generate more profit from premium subscriptions and
lead the music industry in India

24. Strategy

25. 1. Target Market - Consumers
• The target market for Spotify would be the active music
listeners, both Indian as well as foreign music and to
provide them an easy manner of discovering new music

26. 1. Target Market - Consumers
• As the U.S age wise split suggested (Slide 16), the Youth
and the young working population constitute most of the
sales, and a similar pattern would be expected in India

27. 1. Expectations of Target Consumers
• One Music Destination: The active music listeners, which
is the major share of Spotify’s revenue builders, need a
one stop destination for all their music needs
• Old Music Playlists: Also, for a country like India, to cater
to the above 55 age group, who listen to a list of old
classic Bollywood music, Spotify needs to ensure that the
enormous list of playlists that it boasts of is
communicated well

28. 2. Target Market - Collaborators
Suppliers:
Spotify already boasts of internationally acclaimed labels,
but in India, they would need to collaborate with labels like
T-Series to ensure maximum Indian music in their gallery

29. 2. Target Market - Collaborators
Communication Partners:
• Youth Tv Channels: Spotify would have to advertise through
channels that gather the most youth attention, such as Star
World, MTV, HBO, etc.
• Sponsoring Music Events: In-order to cater to the households,
Spotify sponsoring musical Tv Shows would increase the
reach of the application and the communication need to be
done with regards to the target audience of the music show

30. 2. Target Market - Collaborators
Communication Partners:
• Collaborating with Music
Festivals: The number of
annual international music
festivals in India have
increased and so have the
attendance of the festivals,
hence, they should support
such festivals and ensure
visibility for the application

31. 2. Target Market - Collaborators
Communication Partners:
Telecommunication services/Mobile Phone manufacturer:
• Collaborating with mobile phone/local Telecommunication service
providers enables significant reach in the market
• Wynk Music by Airtel, Apple Music hold this advantage over it’s
competitors
Idea is one of the leading Local
Telecommunication service provider that
could help reach out to a diverse set of
audience around the country

32. 3. Target Market - Competitors
• Some of the major competitors in India are Apple Music
and Google Play Music
• Although local Indian competitors like Saavn has a lot of
consumers, it lacks significantly in it’s international
music library unlike Apple Music or Spotify, which is
why it’s excluded out of our consideration

33. 3. Target Market – Competitor offerings
• Apple Music
INR 190 – Individual
INR 120 – Family Plan
• Google Play Music
INR 99 - Individual

34. 3. Target Market - Competitors
• As mentioned previously, both the main competitors to
Spotify have a great reach in the Indian Market due to the
abundance of Android and Apple Phones
• This necessitates Spotify to create that much more value
in it’s offering and the need to communicate the product
well to the target audience

35. 4. Value Proposition - Consumer
• Free Subscription – Unlimited free usage of Spotify with
advertisements, would provide first-hand experience to the
customers
• Premium Subscription – Need to be offered at a price lower than
that of Apple Music to convert as many as possible
• The decrease in family pack price should be significant as it would
help in pulling more of the target customers at once

36. 4. Value Proposition - Consumer
Student Offers: To cater to the college students, they could
be offered special discounts either through the
collaborations with student related events/activities or in a
direct log in and verify age method

37. 5. Value Proposition - Collaborator
• Music Festivals and Events: Spotify being one of the most popular
international music brands would increase the reach of the
particular festival/event as Spotify has a significantly huge reach
in 60 nations
• A similar reason can be justified for Telecommunication Services to
collaborate with Spotify to improve their reach in nations around
the world
• at once

38. Tactics

39. Product:
The Product mix would be the same as the one followed
internationally:
Free Subscription and Premium Subscription
With the same features as explained in the previous slides

40. Brand:
The brand elements should be the same as the
internationally accepted one as it has built it’s brand
equity even in our nation even without actually being
present in our nation

41. Price:
• The price of the Subscription packs would be:
Premium Subscription:
INR 99 – Family Pack
INR 180 – Individual
Free Subscription: Free

42. Incentives:
• Special Discounts to College Students through Music
Festivals and events
• Referral System: Upon suggesting the application to a
friend, the user gets a special offer (for example, two
downloads per each referral)

43. Communication:
• Television Channels:
➢ One of the most important communication modes in India. Spotify
would have to create advertisements specific to each channel so
that they are molded with regards to the audience the channel
caters to
➢ For example, MTV should feature advertisements that show
Spotify as a youth related application

44. Communication:
• Sponsoring Events:
These events could be any Tv music program or a music festival
like Sunburn that boasts of huge turnout with people showing up
from all over the country
• Impactful On-Ground Advertising:
Having creative on-ground advertising campaigns such as people
at Railways stations scanning the QR code next to a famous artist’s
standing figure, which leads them to the play store to download
Spotify

45. Distribution:
The application would obviously be distributed through
Play store in Android Phones, App Store in iPhones and
Windows Store

46. Implem entation

47. Schedule:
Reference: Day 0 = Day of Release
Day -30 to Day 0: Spotify Social media pages posts released about
expanding to India
Day 0: Application release in App Store, Play store, Windows Store,
etc.
Day 1-10: On Ground publicity to be implemented, at public places
such as Railway Stations, Music events
Day 0 to Day 30: Continuous advertising through Music Tv Channels,
Radio Shows, etc.

48. Schedule:
Alongside this, there’ll be sponsorship to various events
across the year which would enhance the reach of the
application

49. Recap

50. Thank You!
By Abhinav.U,
IIT Madras