If you were the CGO or CPO at Spotify India, what's your way forward after this?
Spotify being one of the most loved brands has come down to this, and no wonder! We've seen popular brands being poorly rated en masse as part of agenda driven boycott campaigns, but what we see here is more of a genuine disappointment with the product by its users with its recent update. Assuming someone on the Product side decided to rip off all the features of a basic music player to drive growth in the form of paid subscriptions, Growth additionally will also have to handle the poor Playstore ratings as the outcome. What do you think should Spotify start doing from here? Not asking from a user's perspective (I know we all want free music without their annoying ads) but from a business perspective.
CalmNinja
Stealth
10 months ago
My 2 cents on this -
Charging for something that was previously “free” is always a major no-go decision in most cases.
I have tried experimenting this personally, and have faced similar backlash resulting in us shutting down that experiment.
In this case, the next course of action depends on Spotify’s strategy.
They may want to pivot to a purely paid app direction slowly.
the freemium formula of having millions of free users who aren’t gonna buy the subscription may not be working well for them. And they may just decide to cut the herd thin and have only willing to pay customers.
In a mature product like Spotify, they need to monetise their users and ad-based revenue might not be working too well.
In an app where users passively listen to songs/podcasts, click through rates on ads must be lower than that of YouTube where your attention is on the app.
Hence, only monetisation lever double down would be paid subscriptions.
Sure it would lead to poor reviews and people leaving the platform but Spotify may see it as
- freeloader users leaving who would have never converted
- poor reviews being a knee jerk reaction & this to die down slowly
- other competitors introducing similar limitations and this becoming a new benchmark across apps
It’s an interesting watch for sure
Thanks for the elaborate response.
You were spot on with YouTube CTR part. Also, I'm not so sure about how much ad revenue Spotify makes since I too have been using their free version and never really came across ads that matched my persona or what I was browsing for outside. Spotify never addressed this over the last few years IMO. I felt their targeting was all over the place in addition to their huge volume of super-annoying (meta level) ads! YT on the other hand is right on the money with its ads usually and hence a better CTR obviously.
Just to add one more point about the mass 1 star ratings, google might consider them as spam reviews and might delete a few of them restoring the previous ratings or somewhere similar
MuchosGracias
Stealth
10 months ago
Simple. Indians usually don’t pay for shit. Spotifys premium penetration is under 5% while the rest of the world is at 35%+. The business is not sustainable in India unless there is a way to hit this threshold
You have mass 1star ratings coming from people that didn’t want to pay for the service in the first place and that’s expected,, review bombing is a known phenomenon and google will purge
Maybe a solid Monetisation plan without making the app unusable to the average free user is the only way forward. But Indians being pissed off about a free service becoming paid is classic showboating and this pearly clutching needs to die, otherwise we’ll live in a Jio world soon where everything is free until it’s not
Along with monetization happening the main reason for most 1 star ratings seem to be the disabling of the core features of a music player. Did read through the reviews before posting it here, and I think people are still fine listening to ads. I see this more as a Product level issue negatively impacting Growth and not the other way around.
While the Growth Team can attempt to get the negative reviews purged by Google (the easier way, of course), how much actual product led growth will happen is still a question mark.
PwnJet
Stealth
9 months ago
I feel that it's not just about not paying for shit.
Giving something for free for years and then one day deciding to make it paid, is a bad business model.
They should have made it paid from the start. But nooo, you can't do that in a freemium world can you...
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Should have started charging from day 1. Never works free >> paid. This journey always turns out to be bad unless theres a monopoly or duopoly of that product. Eg. Uber and Ola. Only two major in market. Swiggy and Zomato. Log ek to idhar jaayenge ya udhar - no 3rd option. So free to paid works in these cases. Premium will never work here IMO. There are many jugad available. Youtube open rakhnege, pehle 20 sec add seh lenge but indian consumer wont pay for nice product. Hard crack that code.
Kamlesh
Stealth
10 months ago
Google might just do it across the board for other apps that got cancelled too lol
I mean, those who're paying are not affected. I didn't even know there were changes until my friend shared it. And for those who know the quality is Spotify, playstore ratings doesn't matter.
But yes, YouTube music is 🔥
Personally, I'm tempted to take a paid subscription for YT Music. What would you suggest for podcasts? YT or Spotify? In terms of vastness of content and quality.
I cannot answer your questions since in don't use these for podcasts. But I have the subscription for both of them. I actually pay for YouTube premium and am getting music as well
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I think this is karma, they did with labels and now everyone wants music without any ads
I always pay money for music. I can't stand ads when listening to music. I am a paid user of spotify currently and an apple music user prior to this. Except few very bad UX choices spotify made, I am overall happy with the app.
I can understand the backlash when a free product goes paid. But they need money.
Indians are notorious for not spending money on software. They will spend 300 rupees for stupid chicken leg piece in KFC but won't have the money to spend 150 rupees on a software.
Maybe they should just remove the free version in India,
There are people with 150000 rupees ultra pro max device yet being soo kanjoos that they'll not buy the subscription.
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