Airtel’s Wynk Music to close shutters forever, new Apple-Airtel partnership will offer Apple Music service to Airtel customers

Streaming services whether it is films, podcasts, series, or music, mark a large amount of consumerism in terms of the entertainment sector. Thus, the competition between video and music streaming platforms is always heavily on. In this regard, almost every telecom service provider has their video and music streaming services in the present day.

Airtel, one of the largest competitors in India’s telecom industry, offers exclusive streaming services like Airtel XStream Play and Wynk Music. In the latest developments, Airtel announced that they will be shutting down their music streaming service Wynk.

This decision, though a surprise, does have other parallel developments that Airtel is planning on. While Wynk Music did have powerful competitors like Spotify and Apple Music, in terms of its individual growth, Wynk Music was performing well. Airtel’s Wynk Music amounted to 5% of all music downloads in the quarter end of June 2018. This increased to 8% for the same quarter this year. These statistics, as stated by UBS, a brokerage firm, clearly underline the growth of the service. On the other hand, according to Deutsche Bank, Wynk Music shared about 20% of the market with its downloads in the Asia Pacific region.

Airtel’s partnership with Apple Music

While Airtel is shutting down its Music streaming service, Apple Music on the other hand is joining hands with Airtel to offer its customers exciting offers for its music streaming service. This means that with this, Apple’s music streaming service, Apple Music will now be available for certain Airtel customers. Apple is probably trying to increase its customer reach in India, a country with about 90% Android users. Although Apple Music and Apple TV+ are available for Android, android users commonly go for popular Android alternative music streaming options.

Let’s look at all the changes in services that will follow as a result of Airtel and Apple’s partnership.

• Premium Airtel customers with subscriptions to Airtel’s premium broadband and postpaid services in India, can now avail of an Airtel bundle Apple TV+ in their services.
• Airtel customers will have the option of Apple Music as a music streaming service.
• On the other hand, Wynk users with paid subscriptions will now gain additional offers.
• Charges for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in India are likely to decrease. At present Apple TV+ and Apple Music is available at 99 Indian rupees per month.
• Wynk Music employees will be transferred to other sectors of Airtel’s business.

These changes will be applied in the latter half of this year.