As Spotify turns five in the Middle East, it is spotlighting its remarkable journey that started in 2018.
Below are some of the key highlights and milestones achieved, particularly in the realms of exporting Arabic music.
The music streaming site has been nurturing local talent through on-platform and off-platform initiatives.
Tell us more about Spotify’s growth in the region over the past five years
The last five years have been very strong. If we think about how the business has done over the last few years, the first thing that comes out is that the consumption of music that we’re seeing on our platform is very local right now.
In a market like Saudi, which is going through a massive transformation, you see a mix of international music, but also local music such as Khaleeji music is growing very fast.
Then you have a market like UAE, where you have a very eclectic and international audience. In our data, you see a lot of international music consumption, Arabic music consumption, and a lot of Bollywood consumption as well.
We’ve come from an international music consumption based platform to a platform that reflects local dynamics and local consumer preferences.
On the other hand, funnel health is very strong when it comes to the product. People are really leaning in and making the product their own and when it comes to our product as you know one of our USP’s is personalisation and it requires investment.
Can you share more about the export of Arabic music and other genres?
We’re very bullish about the potential for Arabic music and sounds coming from the region, globalizing.
You have Amr Diab, you have Fairuz, you have Nancy Ajram. You have the legends, but when you go past the legends, you also see interesting trends coming out. Moroccan music, for example, does very well in parts of Europe, also in the US. So artists like ElGrandeToto are extremely popular outside of the region.
You also see artists such as Mohammed Saeed, Big Sam, Issam Najjar, Ali loka, Bader El Shauibi, Xriss Jor and Elyanna participate in Radar.
Radar Arabia is an emerging artist programme launched by Spotify, spotlighting rising talent from around the globe.
How have podcasts grown?
There was no podcast when we launched. Spotify has evolved since then and we’re the world’s number one podcasting platform.
We’ve seen some of that momentum here in the region as well. In the timeframe we’re talking about 2019 to 2023, we’ve seen about 220 per cent plus growth in podcasts.
And if we just talk about the industry itself, it’s relative to music, it’s small. But growing very fast.
So some of the estimates suggest that there are about 10 million podcast listeners in the region, largely in Saudi and UAE, but Egypt is growing very fast as well.
The future
Three things we believe we will be doubling down on as a business:
We think that streaming penetration is still not very high in the region and there is a lot of room for growth.
Localisation is very important for us. Localisation realises itself in many different ways. Price localisation, how we do marketing, what the UI of the product looks like, how we train our algorithms to understand local, Arabic music or South Asian music.
Engage with our fans and focus on creators is probably the most important part of our focus on the future. We want to make sure that creators are able to engage with their fans on Spotify, but not just their existing fans, but also find new fans.
We will be investing in music programmes. Editorial initiatives, marketing campaigns, Radar Arabia programmes which we worked with artists on and EQUAL Arabia as well, which sort of provides a level playing field to women artists.
