The Many Music Markets of India

With a population of 1.48 billion, India is the largest country in the world. And with around 178 million people streaming music online in 2025, it’s one of the biggest music markets, too.

But the truth is, it’s not really a single market. It’s a super colorful and complex tapestry of languages, cultures, platforms, artists, and rights ecosystems that’s better understood as a collection of regional music economies. Listeners here move between Bollywood soundtracks, Hindi pop, Punjabi hits, devotional music, and many other genres.

Broadly, we think of India itself in four regions: North, South, East, and West. And those regions are complemented by artists from across our South Asian neighbors like Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It’s also very linguistically diverse with Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bhojpuri and other languages forming their own markets. Across these geographies and languages, we see many artists, labels, and audiences. But these markets are increasingly connected, too. Music that starts in one state, region, or language can quickly find listeners elsewhere.

Running across all of this diversity there’s also a bigger shift toward independent music. A decade ago, the biggest hits still primarily came out of the Bollywood scene. COVID and social media accelerated the growth of the independent music scene. As one of the world’s largest mobile markets, lockdown meant people were stuck on their phones for months looking for new stuff to listen to. Independent artists filled that gap by self-releasing their work on digital platforms en masse. But it’s no longer just about artists self-releasing music. A much broader ecosystem of independent labels, distributors, artist managers, producers and digital-first businesses supporting regional and independent artists has sprung up.

Meanwhile, the rise of social media has also changed music discovery and the lifespan of releases. Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and UGC now drive discovery in a way that is very different from the traditional release cycle. A creator might release a song on YouTube, get picked up on Instagram, and then drive listeners toward streaming platforms. And songs that travel between apps also travel across regions and borders. A Punjabi artist can build an audience in Punjab, find listeners in Delhi or Mumbai, and connect with the Indian diaspora from Canada, the UK, Australia and the U.S. That ability to move from a regional audience to a national or global one is creating entirely new opportunities for artists whose careers might once have been confined largely to their home markets.

That’s also expanded the role of artists. Many are now creative influencers and expert marketers who see writing, promoting, and distributing music as equal parts of a single job. One of the artists on our roster, Watan Sahi, recently made a big comeback promoting the release of “Bande 4” in early 2025. Over several months he earned 266,000 Reels on Meta and some 68 million views on YouTube. Following the track’s growth, we secured an OOH billboard campaign in Canada that helped increase his visibility and reach internationally.

Older music is finding new life the same way. India has an enormous repertoire of film, regional, independent, and devotional music. That depth of catalogue is becoming an increasingly important part of the market. Digital platforms and new forms of discovery are bringing older music back into circulation and introducing it to entirely new audiences. An old song can resurface in a Reel, get used in a film, spark a remake, be sampled by another artist, or ride a creator trend to millions of new listeners.

We’ve watched Latin music, Afrobeats, and K-pop go global in recent years. India is probably on a similar trajectory, but it won’t necessarily follow the same path. Its future won’t be a single sound, language, or route to success. Instead, many regional and language markets will grow at once, increasingly connected to one another and to the world. Its diversity will be India’s greatest advantage as its music reaches a larger global audience.