Indian legacy Saregama—which managing director Vikram Mehra said was “the second largest” record company “in the country after T-Series” with “a 25% to 30% market share on a pan-India basis in terms of new music”—registered a 19% year-on-year growth in revenue from operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2026.
That was a busy three months for the label, which saw it stage the first edition of its UN40 music festival that drew a footfall of 12,000 attendees; release close to 1,200 original compositions and “premium recreations” in Hindi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali; and add around 30 musicians, comedians and content creators to its artist management roster, which now stands at over 300 acts.
Mehra shared those stats with investors on the company’s earnings call, during which he spoke extensively about three hot-button issues concerning the Indian music industry.
The cost of acquiring the rights of film soundtracks
Saregama’s biggest success of the past financial year was the soundtrack of the Hindi blockbuster Dhurandhar, which was the highest-grossing Indian film of 2025. Mehra said that even five months after its release, the album has been generating 6m streams on audio-streaming platforms and 11m views on YouTube daily. “There was a lot of peer and partner pressure” for the label to obtain the music rights of the second part of the movie, which it ultimately decided not to procure.
“We very strongly at Saregama believe that the music purchase has to be done only with a financial lens in front of us and never that of vanity”, he said. “I’m very proud that the acquisition team stood its ground and refused to buy the album because of the pricing. The expectations of the producer just did not fit into a five-year payback guideline.”
He went on to say that their “position stands vindicated today”, in reference to the fact that even though Dhurandhar: The Revenge, the music rights of which were subsequently acquired by T-Series, was a larger hit at the box-office, its soundtrack—while successful—hasn’t performed as well as its predecessor.
We at Music Ally South Asia are curious to know the timeline of the negotiations between the record companies and the production house because a number of the tracks on both film’s OSTs are based on older songs from the two label’s extensive repertoires. While quite a few songs in the first part of Dhurandhar draw on classics from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, which form the bulk of Saregama’s back catalogue, some of the tunes in the sequel—which is set in the 2000s—mine hits from the ’90s, the first decade of T-Series’ dominance. In other words, the labels were more than just rights buyers and marketeers—they played a major role in shaping the sounds of the songs themselves.
“Artist-driven premium music is going to become far more valuable and not less valuable in this AI-driven world”
Vikram Mehra, MD, Saregama India
The uncontrollable rise of AI-generated content
Like most labels, Saregama has a mixed stance with regard to gen-AI. It stands firm against the proliferation of AI slop but is open to exploring the technology’s revenue-generating potential. “Our position in the company is that owned music which is artist-driven premium music is going to become far more valuable and not less valuable in this AI-driven world where a lot of AI slop is coming in,” said Mehra. “Because the customer at the end of the day is not just relating to a song. Customers also relate to the artist behind the song. That artist might be the actor on whom the song is picturised, or the singer. This is something that is mass-generated, AI slop, which is flooding the ecosystem, can never provide.”
He added that “all the music labels globally and in India are working very closely with the leading three global streaming platforms, making it very clear that when the content pool is going to get distributed, no value should get assigned to content which is getting generated purely through AI. So there is no revenue leakage today.”
He clarified that the company is not anti-AI. “At the same time, we are realising that AI is creating new licensing opportunities as can be witnessed by the deals signed by various global music labels with various generative AI platforms. At the right time, we will also engage commercially with many of these people. So it may become one more way in which our IP can be monetised.”
Saregama, he elaborated, is already using AI by “creating a newer experiment within the company, whereby we are saying that how can we use the capability of the generative AI to create enhanced content and properties around older music that we have, which may be generative AI-driven music videos for a Hemant Kumar song or an SD Burman song. Or it may be podcast, which will be connected to the older songs that we have.”
The revenue from short-format video platforms
“This is one of the areas which bothers us,” said Mehra stating how all the label’s contracts with short-format content platforms “are one-year deals” that limit the scope of income that can be earned from them. “The renewal typically happens based on the usage of our content during the year,” he said. “So yes, we are able to get some kind of a step jump. But it is not as ideal as an advertising-driven model [where] you straight away see benefit accruing to your bottom line.”
