Spotify up to 2 million users in India

Spotify is reaching a larger international audience, and is seeing particular success in India. Cecilia Qvist, head of global markets, shared some insights about the company’s global growth during a conference in Hong Kong. She said that Spotify India now has more than 2 million users. The service launched in India in late February, and had 1 million users within a week.

“We have over 100 editors around the globe,” she said, explaining how Spotify has approached launching in new countries. For instance, Spotify India launched with five different languages to serve as many listeners as possible. “They are instrumental to us, because even though the greatest algorithms that you have, in order to be culturally relevant you have to understand what’s going on in the country so they take care of our playlists and so on in the region. Of course we are using AI for how we create playlists and other things, but there is a mix of both.”

Qvist added that Spotify Lite, a slimmed-down version of the mobile app for markets with less reliable connectivity, could also help boost audience size in India.

Anna Washenko