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Hard to believe that a year ago, we didn’t have Spotify.
To celebrate its first birthday it is launching Spotify Sessions Asia — recordings exclusive to the music streaming service — in the Philippines with comeback pogi rockers Hale. “We think they’re the perfect artists because everybody is just waiting for their comeback,” shares Spotify Asia’s Chee Meng Tan.
The music streaming site had been in Asia a good year before launching in the Philippines on April 2015. “We really wanted to be sure of our OPM catalogue,” clarifies Sunita Kaur, managing director of Spotify Asia to Coconuts Manila over lunch on Thursday. “As soon as we were ready, and had a robust OPM catalogue, then we came in.”
Perhaps handpicking a Filipino band to do a Spotify Sessions Asia — previous featured artists were Malaysia’s Yuna and America’s Hunter Hayes who recorded his session when he was in Singapore for a concert — is the app’s way of making up for lost time, as well as celebrating the Philippines being Spotify’s biggest market in Asia. We are also the second fastest-growing market in the world.
According to Kaur, in Spotify’s 58 markets, the Philippines is only behind Canada and ahead of Brazil.
Tht’s not such a surprise, because the world knows how fucking brilliant and hardcore Filipinos are when it comes to music. Which Spotify is finally getting a taste of: in the one year the app has been around, there’s been a record-breaking 2.5 billion streams from Filipino users.
“It’s not odd but in one year, we also saw 6.8-million playlists created in the Philippines,” continues Kaur. “Everybody wants to be a DJ here, and that’s really encouraging. We knew we’d have fun in the Philippines but we didn’t know we were going to have this much fun. We are very pleasantly surprised to see this.”
According to Spotify, Up Dharma Down’s “Tadhana” is the most-streamed OPM track, followed by Yeng Constantino’s “Ikaw” and Silent Sanctuary’s “Sa’Yo.” Eraserheads, MYMP and Yeng Constantinio, meanwhile, are the top 3 OPM artists people listen to using the app.
