YouTube Music Is Beating Everyone in India
Two Western companies entered the promising Indian digital media market earlier this year: Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) and YouTube, the Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) subsidiary. Spotify launched in February, and about a month later YouTube introduced YouTube Music -- a premium music subscription option -- for YouTube music listeners.
The early results show strength for both companies, but YouTube Music has rocketed to the front of consumers' app launchers. Over 800,000 listeners pay for a subscription, according to a report from Bloomberg. That's almost as many subscribers as Gaana, which has been operating in India for nearly a decade. Twenty-five percent of Indians said they use YouTube Music as their primary app to stream songs in a recent YouGov survey.
Spotify, meanwhile, has reported its results in India have been better than expected. It reported 2 million listeners (between ad-supported and paid) in April, and management said it outperformed its internal forecast by 30% last quarter. Still, Spotify ranks relatively low on the list of primary music-streaming apps.
Source Fool.com
