Punjabi pop icon Karan Aujla’s 2024  single ‘Wavy’ was the most-streamed song on Apple Music in India, as per the DSP’s year-end chart, which is based on plays between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

Aujla has three more tracks in the top ten, and a total of 15 in the top 100, a tally matched only by Hindi film playback singing superstar Arijit Singh, who technically has 16 but whose contribution to ‘Sapphire’ by Ed Sheeran is uncredited.

As in previous years, Punjabi pop dominates Apple Music’s round-up more than on any other streaming service operating in the country. The genre is heavily represented thanks to the likes of AP Dhillon (11 tunes), Diljit Dosanjh (seven) and Shubh (five). Cumulatively, Aujla, Dhillon, Dosanjh and Shubh have more hits on the year-end top 100 than Bollywood OSTs, which account for 32 smashes.

International music also indexes higher on Apple Music than on other platforms in India. Hits by foreign acts make up 11 of the songs on the 2025 survey. However, most of them are by just three artists. Apart from Sheeran’s ‘Sapphire’, there are five tracks from The Weeknd, three from Kendrick Lamar and two from Bruno Mars.

Apple Music’s top ten songs of 2025 in India

  1. ‘Wavy’, Karan Aujla and Jay Trak
  2. ‘Saiyaara’ (from Saiyaara), Tanishk Bagchi, Faheem Abdullah, Arslan Nizami and Irshad Kamil
  3. ‘Antidote’, Karan Aujla
  4. ‘Die With a Smile’, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars
  5. ‘Raanjhan’ (from Do Patti), Sachet-Parampara, Parampara Tandon and Kausar Munir
  6. ‘Apna Bana Le’ (from Bhediya), Sachin-Jigar, Arijit Singh and Amitabh Bhattacharya
  7. ‘Winning Speech’,  Karan Aujla and MXRCI
  8. ‘Afsos’, Anuv Jain and AP Dhillon
  9. ‘Jo Tum Mere Ho’, Anuv Jain
  10. ‘Softly’, Karan Aujla and Ikky

As for the presence of Indian music internationally, six hits from the country feature in Apple Music’s year-end chart for the UAE: the aforementioned ‘Saiyaara’,  ‘Afsos’ and ‘Wavy’ plus ‘Oorum Blood’ from the soundtrack of the Tamil film Dude; Aujla and producer Ikky’s ‘For A Reason’, and ‘Barbaad’, another song from the OST of Saiyaara.

There’s also a Pakistani smash on the UAE list, ‘Pal Pal’ by Afusic and AliSoomroMusic. The track topped the charts in India but was removed after streaming services were sent a government order asking them to remove all Pakistani content from their platforms following deteriorating political relations between the two nations. The year-end chart of India might have looked a bit different had those songs been included.