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Comment by sanketskasar | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure a high percentage of these listeners are using free tier. And most of them using it just to brag that they are listening to music on Spotify.

Their music collection is one of the worst among all services present in India. Lots of major international records are not available. Regional music collection is not good. Only the mainstream/popular content is available. Bought the premium subscription on very first day of launch. Tried using it for few days. Found major stuff missing.

Cancelled and got the refund. Kudos to them for prompt service on this.

But very bad in comparison to Apple Music and other Indian services. Apple Music costs similar for individual account and much cheaper with a family account, has much better International and Indian collection and really good playlists collections, at least in India.

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I used to pay for GrooveShark (which clearly was sketchy lol) and then Spotify, since I subscribed to Google All Music Access I have never had to pirate music just to get access to it. I can cache all the music I like (download it for offline listening) and it works on my iPad too. I wish they had an official desktop client for offline sync, but Google seems allergic to non-web desktop solutions.

I try to avoid getting sucked into Google's Ecosystem, but GAMA is pretty damn good. Sadly I don't know what the situation for GAMA looks like outside of the USA.

Edit:

But my point is, I hated Spotify, I still found myself forced to "acquire" music. This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own. People who don't want to pay for music will not pay for it no matter what you do. At least with Google when I buy music I can sync it to my local machine, but with GAMA I don't have to. The other upside is I get no ads on YouTube since I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium. Yes, I know, AdBlock, but I got grandfathered in to no ads, why would I care about AdBlock?

I've enjoyed my Google music subscription for years as well, but I think it's pretty shady that lately they keep trying to bundle in a free YouTube subscription.

I still buy movies, and I have a fair bit of purchased music from before the subscription, so I'll be more than annoyed if I end up with my media library sitting in YouTube Red if they try to converge the products. Spotify would be high on a short list of alternatives if that happens.

I think if it does happen I may not bother anymore, it'll just save me $14 a month (I pay for my wife to have it too, apparently I can add 2 other family members or something at no extra cost).

@rch -- What's the shady bundling? I haven't been paying attention. I think I'm in the same position as you -- early Google music adopter, previously uploaded my legacy mp3 library to Google music, and get ad free Y-tube.

> I've enjoyed my Google music subscription for years as well, but I think it's pretty shady that lately they keep trying to bundle in a free YouTube subscription

Replacing GPM with YTMusic, unless the latter is updated to support everything, including personal music import and export, that the former does would be shady.

Giving me free YT Premium along with the GPM All Access I was already paying for at no additional cost is not, however, shady.

> This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own.

From what I understand, digital downloads from iTunes and the likes are basically just a perpetual license?

It won’t get you new stuff, but if you’re trying to fill your back catalog in, you can’t beat the price of goodwill.

Is Google Music the same as Youtube Music because I signed up a 2-3 weeks ago and have found it to be horrid at finding new music. No matter what I do it keeps trying to sneak in popular tracks into recommendations. I think of the 200 to so songs I've gone through I've clicked dislike on 185 and it still keeps pouring in the crap. As an example I put in "Anja Garbarek" and picked "Radio" and it played Maroon 5 ?!?. I put in "BodyRockers" and it played rap and EDM.

> Is Google Music the same as Youtube Music

No, Google Play Music (All Access or otherwise) is not the same thing as YouTube Music, though there have been reports and indications that YT Music may be planned to eventually replace GPM.

> Google All Music Access

nitpick, but it's “Google Play Music All Access”

> And most of them using it just to brag that they are listening to music on Spotify.

1 million people using Spotify and wasting data pack to brag to their friends? Seriously?

When you put it that way it almost doesn't make sense, but if you change "1 million" to 0.075 percent of the population, it starts to.

Data is cheap in India.

I'm amazed at how cheap it is. I think that even after adjusting for purchasing power the average person can afford generous data packages.

Data tariffs fell 93% and usage surged 25x in three years (2014-2017)[0]. This was brought about by Jio, which targeted to increase revenue per user which it actually did. https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/data-tarif...

1GB/day 4g for 90 days costs a total of ~$6 in India.

I recently visited India and was shocked at how cheap the data plan was. By far the cheapest data I’ve used anywhere in the world.

Many countries in the EU have cheap data plans. In Italy, for example, there's Kena Mobile, which sells 50GB for 6 EUR.

Can you realistically do a gig of data in a day on a 4G connection?

I used to do 120G/month when I had a limit that high, in Poland, for around 8$/month (I was able to use 2G and 3G and everything in between, too, but most of the time I was on 4G)

Just watch 5-6 Youtube videos on a decent phone (1080p or 1440p) and you're done.

1 GB data is like four 720px 8 minute YouTube videos.

Maybe not to their friends; e.g. Tinder is apparently pretty popular in India and it has integration with Spotify.

In India, for approximately 2 USD per month, you get 1.5 GB 4G data per day and unlimited calls.

These days, data limit is nothing to worry about in India.

How does that scale? Because that sounds awesome if compared to just my own phone plan. But if you say that also fills the role of my home internet, then it's about 1TB too little.

Usually home internet is via other providers, who also have cheap plans. For instance, ACT Giga is 1Gbps, 2.5 TB for about 100 USD per month. Post this limit, speeds usually drop to 1Mbps.

Interesting. Thanks! I was under the impression that most Indians can't get broadband at home.

In all tier 1 cities, which are at least 10, you can get 100Mbps broadband with about 750GB to 1TB data for close to 20 dollars a month. In villages (at least 100 thousands of them) and small towns (roughly 8 thousand of them) where most population resides, the story is different. Only wired broadband provider for them is govt. owned named BSNL whose service is quite unreliable. 4G high speed wireless is accessible everywhere for cheap though.

You're right in that "most" Indians probably do not have broadband access / 4G access. But the urban centers certainly do,and they have enough by way of people to become a huge market. To put it in context, there are at least 46 cities with population > 1M (2011 census), and the top 7 cities by population will certainly have access to broadband as well as cheap 4G. These 7 will account for 50M - 55M in population. In comparison, the US has 10 cities with > 1M population ( as far as I can see on Wikipedia). So even when you account for the lesser internet penetration in India as a whole, the number of people who can possibly access streaming services is quite large.

$100 USD per month is absolutely crazy. My cousin pays ~$30 from MTNL and thinks it's incredibly expensive.

$100 the cost of a 1Gbps Verizon FiOS subscription in the US (though theoretically your data transfer is unlimited and not capped at 2.5TB). Seems reasonable to me but I don't know what that equates to when you factor in purchasing power parity.

Even for the young employed folks this is quite the sum. The fact is though, that over the course of an average month it's pretty hard to hit these caps. Its about 800 hours of Netflix HD streaming, and you're probably not going to be able to watch that much just at home.

The salaries in India are a tiny fraction of what they are in America even for professionals.

That's the absolute top-end of the plans they have in Bangalore. It's around 2000INR (<30$) per month for a much more moderate 150Mbps / 875GB per month plan. And consider that a lot of the urban crowd we are talking about here will be sharing the cost with 1-3 others, considerably bringing down costs.

I was shocked to see how cheap data was there too. You hear a lot of hectoring about being considerate of users in developing countries and being frugal with their data when designing apps and websites but at least in India it's not an issue at all.

It's still an issue on the backhaul though which is still heavily contended in many of those markets.

"being considerate of users in developing countries and being frugal with their data",

This is probably applicable to other developing countries, definitely not to India. Man, data is so cheap, 4G is widespread even in tier 2 cities. Am not sure about tier 3 towns and villages but so far, I am hard pressed to find large tracts of dead zones.

I concur. Once you get used to mobile data plans in India, you'll realize how much American consumers are getting screwed by the likes of AT&T. AT&T behaves as if they are doing a favor to their consumers and that data is like gold, to be used with extreme respect and care.

BTW, only senders are charged for SMS in India, not receivers, unlike American carriers.

American Internet and communications service providers need some serious competition.

That was shocking to know that users are charged for receiving SMS in US!

By the way, In India most plans have some quota for free sms, which almost always go unused. Anyone who uses whatsapp doesn't even bother about sms.

in brazil, it's the same thing. i don't even remember the last time i sent an sms!

even companies are using whatsapp for notifications.

> That was shocking to know that users are charged for receiving SMS in US!

In the US both senders and receivers are charged, generally. Each party pays their provider for the service of carrying messages from and to them across that provider's network.

Note that this makes each party responsible for the part of the complete message transport that they have some control over, and only that part.

So, for example, if you send me a message today, and another message tomorrow, you will pay the same amount both times even if today I'm at home and tomorrow I'm traveling to some remote area where message fees are much higher. I'm the one who pays the higher costs that are incurred due to my travel.

How would this be handled in a place where the sender pays for the whole thing? How do you find out how much it will cost you to send me a message?

In Brazil, SMSes are paid by the sender at local rates. If you are roaming internationally you might pay for receiving them, but it has been a long time since I saw charges for receiving SMSes. Probably the carrier recoups the interconnection fees when you send a SMS back.

For calls, though, the caller pays local rates, but you will pay your share of the roaming charges. Some carriers on pre-paid plans charge you a national long distance fee per call too.

If you think American consumers are getting screwed, just look at us in Canada.

You have free health care atleast.

> BTW, only senders are charged for SMS in India, not receivers, unlike American carriers.

What the heck, that's a thing in the US? How is that even legal

When a business is at the forefront of technological innovation and implementation for decades, the cost of infrastructure builds up, especially when labor cost goes up accordingly.

Now for a nation that is still building itself up, the labor cost is lower and you can simply take the know-hows and older hardwares from the innovators, which significantly cuts down on cost of implementation. Adding that to the economies of scale you can get at 1b+ in population and things can look obscenely cheap.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the businesses you get services from don't abuse of an oligopoly environments and other practices

That conclusion might be a bit strong. It might not have been expensive to you, but many in India probably do not have your income level? The median annual income level in India is under 2000 USD.

And how much is $2/mo when adjusted from local income/cost of living to US standards?

This is the real question.

I'm in Indonesia currently and I pay ~$13 USD for 25GB of data.

1$ has a purchase power of ~18 rupees. So 140rs in India is equivalent to 7$ if you do a PPP conversion.

This is based on 2016 rates. https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/india/ppp-conversion-factor

For 2-4 USD, you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner, depending on location and your preferences.

For about 30 USD, I can buy vegetables (excluding groceries) for the family of 2 for a month. Milk is about .75 USD per liter.

300-400 USD per month is the rent for 3 BHK apartment in good location. (I pay 220 USD for 2 BHK).

For cable tv subscription, I pay around 5 USD.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, unprepared food costs are similar to in most developed countries while everything else is far cheaper.

Median per capita income in India is about $650/yr. I don't know how many hours a median worker works, but to use the US standard of 2k hours per year, that's $0.32 per hour. So two dollars per month is approximately 6 hours of labor.

Now let's try this same calculation with the US. US median per capita income is about $32,000 or $16/hr. The T-Mobile One plan is currently listed on their website at $70 for a single line. That's 4.3 hours.

This is obviously a GROSS estimate, but it appears an Indian worker has to work approximately 1.39x the amount of hours a median American worker has to work for a "good" cell phone plan. You can get much cheaper pay as you go plans, but I wanted to use "mainstream" as much as possible.

2 USD/1.5GB absolutely sounds like something to worry about. Perhaps with such limits you learn to moderate your usage...

2USD/ month for 1.5GB per day..

2 USD per month, you get 1.5 GB 4G data per day 1.5GB every day for 2 USD per month

You are comparing monthly subscription prices to daily bandwidth limitations.

$2 USD for 45GB monthly or $0.07 USD for 1.5GB/daily

Is it so cheap because it hasn't reached market saturation yet? Maybe not a lot of people actually use lots of data and as soon as too many people do the prices will go up.

India has 2nd highest number of Internet users in the world mate.

But do they all download 100gb of data on their LTE each month?

They dont download 100GB. But almost all of them finish their data quotas everyday by watching YouTube and Hotstar videos. Thats like 30GB - 60GB a month.

I heard this comes with forced inserted ads when browsing as well as limited internet access ( only facebook, twitter is available ), is it still valid today?

You can access anything. No restrictions. Advertisements are not that much of a concern.

That statement was never valid in India. Facebook introduced (or tried to) FreeBasics, but they had to withdraw after Net Neutrality regulations.

I live in India only. 1.5GB per day wont even last you through 5 HD YouTube videos. Its a good plan for people who are conservative with their Internet usage. I would probably believe 1 million users with fibre connection wasting their data just for bragging. Definitely not the people who are on 1.5 GB data plan.

HD videos take a lot of bandwidth. Spotify's default quality (I guess the highest you can get with the free tier) is only 96kbps. So if you stream that 24 hours a day it takes:

(96 / 8) * 3600 * 24 / (1024 * 1024) = 0.99GB

>1 million people using Spotify and wasting data pack to brag to their friends? Seriously?

It's evident you don't know India... Most young people in India have dozens of pictures on Facebook of themselves pretending to talk on their mobiles with seemingly expensive sunglasses on. It's like their own particular ice bucket challenge.

This sounds like the same nonsense that old people tell about kids all over the planet.

I've been a long time Apple Music user. Spotify definitely has weaker collection. But, I like the cross platformness/integrations of it. I can cast to chrome cast, play it on linux, and other third party integrations. Also, spotify connect is really nice. That said, Apple did start integrating Apple music with third party providers too (alexa, google home comes to mind). We'll see how it goes.

There are web players coming up which are really polished for almost all desktop platforms. Not sure about their Android situation. Looks optimistic.

You say it looks optimistic, but you don't know about the Android situation and the only thing you have to go on otherwise is a web player that is "coming up" (and therefore does not exist). I don't see how you can come to this conclusion based on this data - you may as well say you are feeling positive for no reason at all.

I have a wonderful thing that Creative used to make, now discontinued I believe. It consists of a USB dongle that appears as a pair of USB stereo speakers to the computer but is actually a radio transmitter, and a matching receiver unit that has stereo line level outputs.

No need for any special drivers, or any special support on the part of music player apps. As long as whatever the player is running on knows how to use USB speakers, I can get the sound to end up at my A/V receiver.

I don't know why this approach was not more popular.

People do the same thing with bluetooth speakers now and you can get a simple bluetooth dongle for about $15 that will output to any speakers/amps/headphones.

Google Music perhaps the best value in India right now, massive international and local catalogue, with the right pricing.

You're speaking of Apple Music, however this implies mostly Apple hardware. How many Indians own iPhones? (and for Android, last time I tried the app, it was a piece of shit).

And personally I'm not happy with the selection of Apple Music from my country (Romania). Not only that but their radio recommendations are absolutely shit. All music streaming services actually pale in comparison with YouTube in terms of availability and even recommendations.

The only problem with YouTube is that the Premium service is only available in a few select countries. If only Google could pull its head out of its ass and give customers that want to pay money a way to do so.

What Spotify has going for it is integration with most devices you care about. Can you stream Apple Music on your Playstation? No you can't. Their apps also have an obvious feature that's sorely missing from alternatives: the ability to remotely control a device, or to painlessly switch devices and pick up where you left off. Spotify are also the only ones with a usable Linux client, with all the others you have to settle for the web interface, which sorely lacks integration with the keyboard's playback buttons.

And their selection has been improving. This reminds me of when Netflix came to Romania in 2016, their selection was shit and they didn't even have subtitles. Nowadays Netflix is widely popular and has really good shows (compared with the established alternatives).

That said nowadays I seem to get along better with Deezer (https://deezer.com), as their automated recommendations seem to work better. And btw, I tried most streaming services available, even local ones (e.g. Zonga.ro) and Apple Music is the last one I'd pick.

How did you get a refund when their premium plan comes with the first 30 days free? I signed up for the premium plan too, without having paid anything for the first 30 days. https://www.spotify.com/in/premium/?checkout=false#PLANS

I bought the prepaid plan for whole year. I was so excited. But alas!! Got the refund.

Keeping in mind the current collection available through Spotify, the more appropriate way to state the first sentence would be:

> Pretty sure a high percentage of these listeners have downloaded and tried the free tier.

Because most of us aren't really using it, are we?

Pretty much not.

I installed the app. Bought premium. Cancelled it. Uninstalled the app.

All in a matter of few days.

What are the top local competitors in India? I'm unfamiliar with the streaming music market there.

JIOSaavn, Gaana, Amazon Prime Music, Apple Music (which is much cheaper as a family account), Hungama, Wynk.

All the above currently have more songs (except Prime) on them than Spotify in India does.

Google Music is a major competitor, with a massive catalogue at the right price, but they don't have a free tier.

You're right, it's just that their sign up is so complicated / glitchy / buggy, that I've never been able to get it and as a result completely forgot about their existence.

Not just in India, in US too. The only reason i’m using AM is because of their library in many languages. I can find indian songs (of many languages), english songs and songs from other languages

How does Amazon Music compare?

I used it for a while as it came bundled with Prime. It has good collection of tracks, international, mainstream and regional. But the interface is clunky and curation and discovery is almost non-existent.

Is this specific to India or in general?

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