Dhingana? They're Streaming 100 Million Minutes of Music a Month...

Tuesday, August 21, 2012
by paul

Last time we checked in on India, we found a 'spectacularly bizarre music market' that featured people calling the radio from their mobile phones, spending disproportionately on ringback tones, and paying little for anything else.

Well, a few months later, there's this. It turns out that localized streaming service Dhingana is surging, and delivering 100 million minutes of music a month to Indian users. Which translates into roughly 1.67 million hours, still a fraction of services like Pandora and Spotify but a strong growth story nonetheless.

This isn't being powered by Rihanna and Avicii. Rather, Dhingana offers localized content and Bollywood soundtracks. "We want to make sure that 100 percent of the music that you look for, with an Indian perspective, is on Dhingana," founder Snehal Shinde just told PandoDaily.

August 8th: "This Is What Streaming Music Looks Like In 2012..."

There are a bunch of other 'stunning stats' here, including the presence of 500 different labels and support for 35 different languages. But perhaps the most interesting is that 40 percent of Dhinghana users come from outside of India, including places like the US, UK, and Canada.

Sounds great, especially since there seems to be room for other players - including global upstarts like Deezer. But according to Indian entrepreneur Vijar Nair of Only Much Louder, comparing datasets between India and other regions can be very dangerous. And big numbers are often totally misleading. "The [Indian] market is so huge, you can put any kind of a product out there and a million people will use it," Nair recently told a group at MusEXPO in Los Angeles. "And a million people typically means your product has been a failure, because of the pure size of the market. It's at about 850 million mobile connections right now, and it's still growing."

May, 2012:"India: A Seriously Strange Music Market..."

There are other issues. From the outside looking in, it's tough to tell whether Indians will embrace something with a Western catalog. On one hand, there seems to be considerable resistance to paid content, though there hasn't been that much to choose from. "It's the reason piracy is so high in India, because you won't take our money, it's as simple as that. And it's really silly, because everyone knows that India and China are growing," Nair shared. "Between all the major labels it just hasn't happened..."

Comments Closed

Comments (5)

@rmirchandani Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I think your math is off.

Pandora streams 1 billion+ hours/month vs Dhingana's 1.67 million hours/month - so those aren't in the same range.

And Spotify has 15+ million MAUs. So if they listen just 1 hour/month on average - that's 15x bigger than Dhingana... and I would imagine the usage is higher than 1 hour/user/month.

paul Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Yes, you're right. It's a fraction, pardon the big error everyone!

/paul

dudereally Wednesday, August 22, 2012

what's with this graphic? anyone else think it's a little ridiculous?

ASG Friday, August 24, 2012

agreed, the choice of graphic isn't well thought out...

Guest Friday, August 24, 2012

You should probably look at the Dhingana website before you start discussing the choice for graphic.

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