- Mumbai and Delhi are leading the domestic music streaming app market, accounting for 25 percent of the total audio over-the-top (OTT) listeners, far ahead of other cities.
Mumbai and Delhi are leading the domestic music streaming app market, accounting for 25 percent of the total audio over-the-top (OTT) listeners, far ahead of other metropolises, such as Kolkata (11 percent), Bengaluru (10 percent), and Hyderabad (8 percent), a data and insight consultancy report from Kantar said. Smaller towns like Lucknow and Kanpur each stood at 4 percent.
A whopping 44 percent of Mumbai’s time spent on music provided by OTT audio services, led by Delhi (24 percent), Bengaluru (10 percent) and Hyderabad (5 percent).
Kantar and audience measurement and analytics company VTION jointly conducted the study, OTT Audience Measurement, and Insights in January. The survey sample size was close to ten thousand people across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Kanpur.
“The year 2020 will be’ The Battle for the Ear’ as OTT audio platforms shake up the music industry, especially as they compete intensively with radio. Today, listeners are spoiled for choice in terms of content, and move across platforms to meet their entertainment needs, “said Hemant Mehta, Kantar South Asia’s Managing Director, Insights Division and Chief Strategy Officer.
Over the month, approximately 13 million adults listened to an audio streaming app with an average person spending 65 minutes a day listening to music. Listening times peaked during the morning commute hours (9-10 am) and during the week in the late evening (9:30-10 pm). According to the report, the core OTT listener was women and he was skewed towards the middle class.
In markets such as Pune or Chennai, apart from Delhi and Kolkata, where the radio is still the go-to medium, audio streaming was however not as strong. Indeed there is a strong tilt towards OTT in Mumbai.
Audio OTT also began competing effectively with television, consistently peaking between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm during prime time viewing slots
Gaana, the streaming service owned by Times Internet Ltd, dominated the audio streaming market with a 30% share followed by JioSaavn (24%), Wynk Music (15%), Spotify (15%), Google Play Music (10%) and others (7%).
On average, however, users spent more time on the Swedish music streaming service Spotify (86 minutes per day) than Gaana (63 minutes) and JioSaavn (49 minutes) did. While Spotify’s core markets were Mumbai and Delhi, besides the two meters, Gaana had a strong presence in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.
“Millions of Indians are now spending their’ me time’ enjoying genuine high-definition digital music in their native language on Gaana during their commute, office or leisure time. As the industry leader, we have continuously innovated on the user experience to cater to mobile internet users of the first generation and developed a deep understanding of the tastes of Indian music lovers. This will bring us on-board the next quarter-billion Indians from tier-2 and 3 cities into the music streaming bandwagon, “Gaana, chief executive, Prashan Agarwal said.
Bollywood remixes (Muqabala), besides independent singles like Yaad Piya Ki Aane Lagi and Pachtaoge, were among the top 10 songs for the month. Tujhe Kitna Chahne Lage, by Kabir Singh, continued to appeal even six months after the release of the film.
