[Herald Interview] K-pop’s 'best years are ahead of us': Spotify’s general manager for Asia Pacific

Gautam Talwar, Spotify’s general manager for Asia-Pacific (Lee Sang-sub/ The Korea Herald)

Countering concerns of many local music critics who believe K-pop has already reached the peak of its growth, Gautam Talwar, Spotify’s general manager for Asia-Pacific, suggests that K-pop’s best years are yet to come.

“We’re a data-driven platform and our data suggests that the best years are ahead of us. More Korean artists are being discovered than ever before, more streams are being generated than ever, and more royalties are being generated for the Korean music industry,” said Talwar in an interview with The Korea Herald in Seoul on Tuesday.

The innovation in the creative works and the artistry behind idols have just now started getting global recognition, he indicated.

“If you look at artists from Korea, we generated about 5.8 billion monthly streams today. These streams are coming from a variety of markets including the US, Brazil and Thailand. Korean artists are being discovered by first-time listeners 2.2 billion times on Spotify in 2023 a year alone. It speaks to the power of their creativity and the production values of the work," said Talwar.

Not only K-pop artists but also Korean musicians in other genres such as hip-hop, ballads, rock and original soundtracks are trending on the global platform.

“Spotify is a key constituency in building this audience that we are now finding different ways to monetize,” he continued.

Spotify, the world’s most popular streaming platform, however, finds it hard to acquire a major share in the Korean market due to dominant local players such as Melon and Genie Music.

In an ambitious attempt to attract more users, Spotify implemented its ad-supported free tier in Korea on Oct. 9.

“The free tier has been a strategic differentiator and pillar for Spotify right from its inception in 2008. Today, about 60 percent of our premium subscribers have come through the free tier,” he explained.

Talwar points out that the platform being a big powerhouse with more than 100 million songs and 6 million podcasts from all around the world is what differentiates Spotify from other local platforms.

But the most important differentiator is Spotify's effort to continue innovating its technology by investing in research and development.

“In 2023, we spent about $1.8 billion on R&D. And, that's almost a 24 percent growth over how much we spent in 2022. AI is something that we have been playing with for many years. You’ll see that in our personalization playlist,” said Talwar.

Spotify offers personalized playlists such as “Daylist,” which is a playlist that evolves throughout the day based on the user’s listening behavior, mood and habit.

It is also working on engaging more Gen Z listeners.

“One thing about Gen Zs is that they really crave connection. We’re working on it in multiple ways. One is connecting with social media platforms. When you have songs and playlists, you can share them on these social media platforms very easily. We have several socially connected playlists such as a playlist called Blend. You can connect to a friend and together come up with a playlist,” he added.

On Oct. 16, Spotify announced its partnership with Instagram to enable users to save songs they discover on the social media platform directly to their Spotify accounts.

Talwar hinted that Spotify continues to explore opportunities to partner with more social media platforms to target the Gen Z audience.

By Hong Yoo(yoohong@heraldcorp.com)