How Spotify is leveraging technology to benefit its most popular playlist: Punjabi 101

“It’s been four years of Spotify in the country, and Punjabi is in the lead when it comes to music and language. The consumption of Punjabi music has grown exponentially on the music streaming platform, and Punjabi music has become a global phenomenon, cutting through linguistic barriers and finding its way to not just the diaspora, but also to international listeners,” adds Balyan. According to Balyan, in India, Punjabi is one of the most popular music languages, with Punjabi artists across pop and hip-hop topping charts regularly.

In 2022, Spotify Wrapped data saw ‘Excuses’ by AP Dhillon, Intense, and Gurinder Gill emerge as the most streamed song on Spotify in India – with over 19 crore streams, and the late Sidhu Moose Wala’s ‘Moosetape’ the most-streamed album over the year, and four out of the 10 most streamed songs in India were in Punjabi.

“The fan and artist connect in the Punjabi music diaspora is phenomenal. This is an artist-centric music industry, and our endeavour is to bring more artists from Punjab onto our platform enabling them to reach a wider audience in India, and across our global markets. The masterclass and industry expert sessions in Chandigarh bring us a step closer to that goal, says Balyan.

To streamline things for the artists, and help them leverage technology, Spotify has a separate purple colored artist app where the artists can check the data, logistics, consumption, popularity, playlist, many features custom made to benefit the artist. “This cuts the middleman, especially for the new artist, who can simply pitch his/her song to the playlist editors via this app. Once it is streaming, we have social media sharing tools to boost it, if you cross a milestone, then we provide digital posters, and so on. It’s all about optimising the app features, and maximising your presence,” says Balyan who strongly feels that in today’s times, a song alone will not make the cut.

“It’s a smart play of marketing, distribution, reach, music composition, labels, endorsements etc, and masterclasses like these addresses all these questions with industry experts.”