Spotify to finally arrive in India and take on YouTube

Spotify is finally arriving in India, according to numerous reports.

The streaming music service will look to take on YouTube, the biggest such site in India at the moment which offers largely free streaming of music.

Initially, Spotify will also offer its service for free, with a much longer trial than the 30 days it usually offers to new users.

It could launch in the country soon, various reports claimed. The company has signed many of the required agreements with record companies but still has some left to complete, according to Bloomberg.

India remains a vast market for any technology company: with a population of nearly 1.5 billion people and increasing affluence, it has propelled many companies to global success.

And 100 million people already use streaming services to listen to music in the country. But a very small proportion of them actually pay to do so, offering a challenge for premium services like Spotify.

While Spotify does offer a free tier, it is severely limited and users are asked to pay for the full service.

Currently, Spotify is available in 77 countries. It has been gradually expanding, but must ensure all of the vast library of songs it has are able to be played in each individual countries, requiring agreements with all the major record companies.

In India, that is even more complicated, since technology companies must account for the large number of languages and the relatively small number of people who use a credit card.

Many other international streaming services, including Apple Music and Amazon, are already available in India.