[아이뉴스24 윤지혜 기자] ‘Spotify’, the world’s largest music streaming service, is coming to attract domestic artists.
By introducing a platform exclusively for creators, it locks in domestic artists and users. The original podcast content that can only be heard on Spotify is also expanded.
Korea’s managing director Park Sang-wook, who leads Spotify Korea, revealed its localization strategy at’Spotify Media Day’ held online on the 8th.
On the 2nd, Spotify started official service in Korea. Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service, providing more than 70 million music sources and 4 billion playlists to 345 million users in 93 countries. A customized sound source recommendation service that analyzes and provides users’ preferred genre, singer, and listening pattern with artificial intelligence (AI) is a feature.
Director Park said, “Korea is an important market in that it ranks sixth in the global music streaming market, and it is one of the few countries that exports content to other countries.” It ranked first in the store and is still receiving good responses, such as maintaining the top ranks.”
However, there are concerns that Spotify will step on the path of’Apple Music’ as it fails to secure sound sources from large domestic retailers such as Kakao M and Genie Music.
Accordingly, Spotify plans to attract domestic artists through the’Spotify for Artists’ service.
Spotify for Artist is a concept in which a big data platform and a fan community are added, and when a creator uploads his or her sound source, data statistics of users who listen to it can be checked. For example, creators can identify regions with many users who enjoy their music and reflect them in the next performance schedule.
In addition, it is possible for creators to upload short video’short form’ content or share their taste in music. Fans can check the creator’s new news and performance news, and purchase tickets and goods.
Director Park said, “In order to provide optimized services to users, the creators must also be given good technology and tools,” he said. “We will spread Spotify for Artists.” He then emphasized, “For this, we conducted a master class for domestic music labels, and we plan to meet more labels and creators.”
Another strong point of Spotify, the podcast, will also be released this year. Spotify already had 2.2 million podcasts in the fourth quarter of last year. The Spotify podcast created by Michelle Obama and Prince Harry has also become a hot topic in Korea. Accordingly, Spotify plans to secure exclusive and original contents in collaboration with domestic creators.
Discussions with large domestic distributors are also continuing. Director Park added, “We are currently in close consultation with several partners. Considering that 40,000 songs are uploaded a day on Spotify, we will be able to provide a good service through continuous updates.”
Spotify also clarified the controversy over high-priced plans. The Spotify Premium one-person plan costs 1,900 won per month (excluding VAT), and the two-person plan costs 16,350 won. The problem was that the’free listening’ service that was introduced in other countries was not introduced, and there was no controversy over the expensive rate plan because there was no family rate system that could be used by multiple people.
Regarding this, Director Park said, “With the price setting in consideration of the user’s optimal listening environment, the usage fee for the two-person plan is reduced to 8,000 won per person. The free option is that Spotify allows all users to listen As it is a goal, I will prepare for various situations by matching that part.”
Reporter Yoon Ji-hye [email protected]