The latest episode of The Indian Music Charts Podcast unpacks India’s rise as the world’s second-largest streaming market, and the country’s next big move on the global music platform
The Indian Music Charts Podcast PIC/SPOTIFY.COM
For over a decade, “India is the next big music market” has echoed through industry conferences with the confidence of a prophecy. What feels different now, argue music journalist Amit Gurbaxani and TuneCore South Asia head Akhila Shankar on the The Indian Music Charts Podcast, is that the prophecy is finally brushing up against proof.
In their latest episode, the hosts braid anecdotes with analytics. They map the visible shifts through international delegations at Indian music conferences, global festival franchises planting flags here, and a steady uptick in international artistes touring the country against the hard numbers in the Luminate 2025 Year-End Music Report. In 2025 worldwide on-demand audio streams crossed 5.1 trillion, up about 9.6 per cent from the previous year — a brand-new all-time high for the industry.
On paper, India is formidable. It is the world’s fourth fastest-growing subscription market globally according to Luminate. Indian listeners are demonstrably more open to international artistes than before. Five Grammy winners from the most recent awards season performed in India over the last year. This points to a touring pattern that would have seemed improbable not long ago.
But charts, Gurbaxani cautions, are blunt instruments. “They don’t always reflect what’s happening on the ground because the charts essentially are a numbers and volumes game,” he says. An international act can sell out arenas in India without dominating the Spotify Top 200. That scale, however, masks a structural imbalance. “In terms of volume rate, we’ve been number two for a while,” Shankar notes, “If you contrast that with the revenue side then last year we were number 15 in global ranking.” India streams a staggering amount of music but earns significantly less per stream than mature Western markets.
The culprit is this: ad-supported listening still dominates. “We’re still very heavily ad-supported in terms of streaming revenue mix. People are still very used to getting ads, we are starting to see the product-led efforts to subscription growth but it’s early stage,” she says, and advertising revenues are not growing at the same pace as streams. In the US and Europe, subscription growth has plateaued. However, according to the Luminate 2025 Year-End Music Report, India saw a roughly 43 per cent jump in premium (paid) streaming year-on-year, adding more than 23 billion new premium plays in 2025. That premium growth is among the fastest anywhere even if ad-supported listening still dominates overall. “The volume is already here. The monetisation is not yet here, but the directionality of the monetisation is correct,” Shankar says. For global businesses thinking in decades, that signal matters more than immediate yield.
Amit Gurbaxani and Akhila Shankar
This explains why cracking India has become essential for international acts. Entry strategies are increasingly deliberate visible in collaborations with Indian artistes, remixes, social media engagement tailored to Indian audiences, and tightly planned touring runs. The outward journey of Indian artistes exporting seamlessly beyond diaspora strongholds remains more uneven. Gurbaxani points to Punjabi stars like Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla, whose songs have entered the Canadian Hot 100, often buoyed by diaspora audiences. The question lingers if that is the true crossover, or is demographic density translating into chart impact?
Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs achieved global traction and translated into overseas touring opportunities. Yet sustained, multi-market chart dominance — the kind that rewrites the narrative of a nation’s music industry — has not fully materialised.
Infrastructure complicates the picture at home. “The ability to pay is not the problem at all. But infrastructure is a bigger issue,” Shankar says. Large-capacity venues are limited to a handful of spaces such as DY Patil Stadium. Contrast that with South Korea’s meticulously constructed K-pop ecosystem with synchronised management agencies, and government backing, India’s growth appears more organic than engineered. That is not necessarily a weakness. But it does mean the machinery is still assembling itself in real time.
So what hasn’t happened yet? Certain global superstars still skip India on world tours. A definitive, sustained global breakout hit from India remains elusive. Still, the direction is unmistakable. India has scale, appetite, and accelerating subscription momentum. The leverage is catching up.
Source: The Luminate 2025 Year-End Music Report
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On-demand audio streams in 2025
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