Music streaming service Spotify has launched in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, two years after launching in India, the company announced on Monday.

This expands Spotify’s rollout in South Asia to four countries, leaving only Myanmar. 

CEO Daniel Ek first announced the expansion plan in their Stream on Event, which targets untapped markets with high potential. As per their infographic, they are able to reach 1 billion + customers in those 80+ countries. This becomes the largest ever one-shot expansion of the music streaming platform. This becomes the largest ever one-shot expansion of the music streaming platform.

Before this, they were available in 93 countries. So, the total number of countries with Spotify music service becomes 170+ markets.

Local language, pricing

Spotify is available in Nepal in free and premium plans. They have introduced localized pricing for the premium plan which is cheaper than other markets.

It will work with local creators and partners to expand our music offerings and deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of the Nepal market.

Now you can also visit the Spotify website in the Nepali language.

In the international markets, it also offers a free 1 month of premium plan for an individual in Nepal. It helps people to try out the premium features for free and then buy later.

Plan for Nepal Market

	Spotify offers in Nepal	Features	Monthly Cost
	Free plan	Ad breaks, Shuffle play, 6 skips, online streaming, basic quality	Free
	Premium Plan	Ad-free, play any song, unlimited skips, offline listening, and high quality	USD 2.99

 

Spotify is available officially in Nepal now, you still need to use international credit cards or Paypal for the payment.

While tried to buy a Premium plan using a local bank debit card, it failed. 

In the future might be integrated with local card payment or digital wallet payment in Spotify Nepal.

Spotify completes 2 years in India

The premium subscription costs INR 119 per month in India. After finishing two years in India this month, Spotify disclosed the following details on the Indian market (no paying subscriber numbers were disclosed)

•    *10,000+ Indian artists claimed their Spotify for Artists profile since launch, and 600+ playlists (up 5x since launch) have been locally curated by Spotify’s in-house editors featuring several of these artists.

•    *In 2020, more than 20 artists from India featured in several Spotify global playlists. This included Antariksh, Abhilasha Sinha, Sandunes, and Sarathy Korwar, among others.

•    *The number of podcasts created on Anchor (which was acquired by Spotify in 2019) in India has increased 80x in a span of one year (Feb 2020 – Feb 2021).

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YouTube introduced the High Dynamic Range (HDR) support for videos that enable the users to create quality content on the platform back in 2016. This HDR support includes higher contrast videos, more precise shadows and highlights, a broader variety of colors, and overall enhanced image quality.

Since Livestream videos are more popular on YouTube, the Company has decided to add this HDR support for Livestream content as well. This announcement has come after the company rolled out HDR support more than four years ago for pre-recorded video content uploaded to the platform. According to Mashable, with this announcement, YouTube becomes the first major platform to enable HDR quality content on its live streams. HDR  videos have a broader range of colors and higher contrast. An HDR video's whites will be brighter and blacks will be darker. The overall image ends up being much more vibrant than that of standard video. With this new feature, the users are more likely to notice a substantial difference between HDR and non-HDR video than between 4k and 1080p video. Viewers can stream HDR content on any supported mobile device, TV, or streaming set-top box or stick.

YouTube has provided creators with an outline of what they need in order to Livestream in HDR as well. This is the second time this month that YouTube has launched some big new features for the company's live-streaming features. Last week, YouTube rolled out new updates to its Premiere feature, which allows creators to air pre-recorded uploaded video as a one-time Livestream when it is first made public.  The new features allowed creators to air a teaser trailer or countdown before the video's debut. The update also provided creators with the ability to Livestream before the video's premiere and seamless transition into the newly uploaded video after the live portion of the stream ends.

source; theverge

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Facebook pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia’s overpayments to media organizations. Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company stands ready to support news media while reiterating its concerns over mandated payments. "Facebook is more than willing to partner with news publishers," Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a compromise with Australian officials. Facebook News to Be Restored in Australia as Government Agrees to Amend Law. 

"We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies function - informing and empowering citizens and holding the powerful to account."

Facebook and Google have both devoted money to supporting journalism in the past, citing its critical role in democracies. Clegg defended the California titan in a blog post titled "The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia." Australia Passes Landmark Law on Content Payment as Facebook Restores News. The social media platform came under fire after it blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.

Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the controversy is a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and news publishers. Newsgroups share their stories on the social network, or make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons designed into websites, Clegg noted. Facebook drove some 5.1 such "free referrals" to Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian dollars, according to Clegg.

"The assertions - repeated widely in recent days - that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false," Clegg said.

"We neither take nor ask for the content for which we were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price."

 

'Erred' enforcement

Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally proposed in Australia, "Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multi-national media conglomerates under an arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between publishers and Facebook."

He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country, "we erred on the side of over-enforcement" and acknowledged that "some content was blocked inadvertently" before being restored. After two decades of light-touch regulation, tech giants such as Google and Facebook are coming under increased government scrutiny. In Australia, regulators have zeroed in on their online advertising dominance and its impact on struggling news media. According to Australia's competition watchdog, for every $100 spent on online advertising, Google captures $53, Facebook takes $28 and the rest is shared among others. To level the playing field, Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay for using expensive-to-produce news content in their searches and feeds.

"It is understandable that some media conglomerates see Facebook as a potential source of money to make up for their losses, but does that mean they should be able to demand a blank check?" Clegg asked rhetorically.

"It's like forcing carmakers to fund radio stations because people might listen to them in the car - and letting the stations set the price."

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee recently warned that introducing the precedent of charging for links could open a Pandora's Box of monetary claims that would break the Internet.

source: gadgetsndtv

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