Srishti Das (Founder, Hivewire) on music strategy for emerging markets

Music artists and brands outside the US and Europe are increasingly dominating the charts and driving industry-leading innovations in music-tech products, fan experiences, and business models.

Importantly, though, understanding the opportunity in these markets is not just about checking off marketing checkboxes on consumption numbers, dollars, or shiny features. It’s about appreciating the unique cultural, social, and economic nuances that shape local tastes, consumption patterns, and creative innovations over time.

Last week, we brought in Srishti Das — founder of Hivewire , previously a consultant at MIDiA Research and music publishing liaison at JioSaavn — to dive into how to approach music strategy for emerging markets more thoughtfully and holistically. We covered the rise of the “glocalization” buzzword and what it really means for artist strategy; nuances in social media behaviors for music fans across different markets; and key differences in marketing strategy for niche subcultures vs. big brands in an international context.

Below is a recap of the main themes from the discussion, which was moderated by Water & Music founder Cherie Hu. You can also watch the full interview via the video linked below.

In the music industry, the term “emerging markets” gets thrown around often in conversations about pursuing new global audiences, especially in BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and surrounding regions in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

However, as Das explained, the term is limited in its broadness. At its worst, it runs the risk of warping the goal of international growth into reshaping newer markets to resemble Western ones, instead of appreciating their unique nuances:

“ [Emerging markets] is a very colonial term … Western markets were essentially looking for new revenue opportunities because they were hitting saturation … And it ended up being, ‘How do I make these new markets like the US or the UK or France or Canada? How do we make them like these markets that are already successful?’ It unfortunately doesn’t work that way, because India or China or Brazil is not the US. We have not gone through the same linear process of music listening from vinyl players to cassettes and CDs … Our experiences with music are so different.”

In her work, Das focuses less on geographic categories, and more on niche fan and artist dynamics that may indicate upcoming cultural shifts, like the rise of amapiano. “I tend to call them just ‘new markets’ versus emerging markets,” she said, adding that the focus is on consumer behavior at large — “seeing how people are consuming or engaging or interacting or even creating music in different ways.

In a Hivewire blog post in June 2023, Das defined “glocalisation” as the act of a global brand adapting their product or service to meet intended customers’ local needs.

During our interview, Das pointed to the example of McDonald’s Mahajara Big Macs in India — where the beef patties are swapped out with chicken and veggie patties to comply with India’s food laws — and the music-specific example of Spotify including localized features like single-day plans when they launched in India in 2019.

However, what interests Das in her work is less the angle of glocalization — which has been around as a marketing concept since the 70s and 80s — and more the concept of internationalization, where a local product or culture becomes popular globally. Local genres like afrobeats and reggaeton have gained worldwide fans and topped the Billboard charts, a phenomenon made more possible today thanks to the wider spread of diasporic populations around the world that can unite around shared cultural roots.

Continuing the analogy with the McDonald’s Maharaja Big Mac, Das shared:

“With glocalization, McDonalds enters these new markets by localizing their global product … but with internationalization, the question becomes, can McDonald’s get the Maharaja Mac to be one of the most popular burgers they ever sell, everywhere in the world? Whether you’re sitting in the UK, Mexico, South Africa — can you sell a Maharaja Mac? That’s the situation music is in, and I think that’s more interesting, because we’re not just talking about local markets anymore. It’s also way more difficult, because now you have to really think about how you’re going to cut through the clutter and make sure that your product is getting out there.”

In our Global Music Rights Academy , we discussed the importance of local nuances in consumer behavior as a lens for understanding how local music industries and cultures evolve over time.

Similarly in our interview, Das cited India as a key example of how increased affordable mobile connectivity and data has enabled the growth and maturation of the music market there:

“There’s no better example than India. Data used to be so expensive, and then all of a sudden in 2017, Jio came in and provided free SIM cards for everyone with 1GB of data usage. That’s a lot — I still have that plan, and I don’t use up all my data every day. That really created a massive boom in entertainment consumption in India, where the kind of music that was being consumed was no longer just Bollywood , but a lot of South Indian music and very rural folk music.”

That said, Das emphasized the need to move away from looking only at macro consumption or demographic trends in emerging markets, and to focus on observing local fan behaviors and music scenes directly:

“ Instead of ‘big data,’ it’s more of a ‘small data’ approach … When we look at these markets, we tend to look only at data from people who have either mobile phones or internet connections. A lot of the time, that’s not representative of the whole market in terms of how people find the music they want.”

Unsurprisingly, live shows often remain the strongest signal of which songs or cultural trends will stick long-term. Das cited a personal example of realizing the popularity of “Ya Ya Ya” by Uncle Waffles before it was officially released, by seeing it performed live repeatedly.

“I don’t have the numbers for it, but in the amapiano world, I went to about nine shows in the UK and every single set had that song. So it must be really popular, at least across the live circuit, for people to be enjoying it that much.”

Participating in the music streaming economy today means having instant, global distribution to a potential audience of millions of listeners the moment a song is released.

That said, in the context of sustaining an artist strategy or music scene, Das emphasized the importance of strengthening one’s local audience and industry infrastructure before expanding globally, instead of cutting corners and trying to achieve global growth from the beginning:

“ I think it’s really important to build local infrastructure in the markets that are seeing high growth … Why isn’t the Nigerian market developing as quickly as Burna Boy is developing? The other end of the example is obviously K-pop — BTS is doing their military service, but has K-pop’s popularity gone down? No, there’s still a new K-pop artist I hear about almost every day. The scene is still growing and progressing thanks to the infrastructure that is so strong there.”