India insight – every month, music business journalist Amit Gurbaxani shares his expertise, insight, and analysis on key stories from the exciting, exploding market of India.
At every subsequent edition, the increase in the number of delegates at India’s largest music conference, the Mumbai-based All About Music, seems inversely proportional to the average age of the attendees. A record 8,000 people attended the conference across its three days in August this year, and the majority of them appeared to be aspiring young musicians keen to get the most of the panels, workshops, masterclasses and networking opportunities.
For those who cover the music industry, it was a rare opportunity to hear executives and artists share data that’s rarely made available in the public domain (the Indian Music Industry or IMI, which represents over 200 labels across the country, has yet to reveal revenue figures for 2023).
Here are 24 numbers we caught at the sessions (the dollar amounts are approximations based on the exchange rate at the time of publication).
Disclaimer: I co-moderated a panel at the conference that was also released as an episode of my podcast The Indian Music Charts Podcast.
Rs3,000 crore ($357 million) –
The size of the recorded music industry, which Vikram Mehra chairman of trade body IMI, called “abysmal” for a country the size of India
Recorded music
Rs3,000 crore ($357 million)
The size of the recorded music industry, which Vikram Mehra, the managing director of local label Saregama and the chairman of trade body IMI, called “abysmal” for a country the size of India – which is now the most populous nation in the world with over 1.4 billion – in his conference-opening keynote.
Rs1,000 crore to Rs1,200 crore ($119 million to $143 million)
The total amount of investment made by labels on new content, according to Mehra, who believes this number can grow “multifold” if certain gaps are filled, such as more listeners paying for music by subscribing to streaming services and short-format video apps opening their platforms to advertising.
18%
The proportion of revenue generated from premium tier accounts of the overall money earned from streaming by India, shared Outdustry founder and managing director Ed Peto during his keynote on the global recorded music industry, citing data from the IFPI.
10%-15%
The average proportion of the cost of an Indian film that its producers recover by selling the rights of the soundtrack to a label, shared Saregama’s Vikram Mehra. “We’re the first people to give the seed money towards the cost of the production,” he said.
Rs15 crore to Rs25 crore ($1.8 million to $3 million)
The average price of a four-to-five song soundtrack of an Indian film led by “an A-category star”, on top of which labels spend “Rs3 crore to Rs5 crore” on marketing, added Mehra. Notably, he had pegged Rs3 crore to Rs5 crore as the average price for a single film song in his 2022 keynote, implying the rates have remained the same.
Rs25 lakh to Rs2 crore to Rs3 crore ($30,000 to $3,00,000)
The range of the average price of a “non-film” or commercial Indian pop song, “if you include video production and marketing costs”, as per Mehra. Again, this was the same figure he mentioned as the cost of a “non-film” track in 2022.
No.3
The position of India among markets for digital music distributor TuneCore, said CEO Andreea Gleeson, who added that parent company Believe was a “top three” label in India.
21 years
The average age of new artists entering India’s music industry, according to Abhishek Patil, the head of A&R at Warner Music India, who said the mean has fallen from 30 five years ago.
Over 50,000 –
The number of tickets Ed Sheeran sold for his +-=÷x tour-closing show in Mumbai
Live music
Over 50,000
The number of tickets Ed Sheeran sold for his +-=÷x (Mathematics) tour-closing show in Mumbai in March, said Adam Wilkes, the president and CEO of AEG, Asia Pacific. Though unconfirmed by co-promoter BookMyShow, that figure is thus far the highest for a concert by an international act in India, prompting Wilkes to say that “Mumbai has arrived as a global destination for superstar artists, meaning that the production integrity was at the top level, the safety was handled just like any major event anywhere else, and the economics were commiserate with almost any major global city.”
3,000
The number of kids waiting at the airport when K-Pop star Jackson Wang arrived for his performance at the first edition of Lollapalooza India in Mumbai in January 2023, said AEG’s Wilkes.
500-600
The approximate number of events organised at colleges across India by TribeVibe, a division of BookMyShow, between September and April every year, said founder and CEO Shoven Shah. Out of these about 30 to 40 are staged every weekend in October, November, February and March.
15,000+
The number of music concerts staged in India every year, said Sabbas Joseph, the founding director of event management company Wizcraft.
“Almost” 20x-25x –
The multiple of the streaming revenue pop singer Arjun Kanungo earns from Japan in comparison to DSPs in India
Artist revenues
“Almost” 20x-25x
The multiple of the streaming revenue pop singer Arjun Kanungo said he earns from Japan in comparison to what gets from DSPs in India via his label One Mind Music, which operates in both countries. Kanungo was speaking at a panel titled ‘How Do Artists Make Money?’.
10%
The proportion of his income that blues guitarist and singer Arinjoy Sarkar earns from performing live. He earns the majority of his money – a whopping 90% – from music teaching engagements.
60%
What electronic music producer Sickflip, aka Sarvesh Shrivastava, earns from live bookings and club night properties he runs. A quarter of his revenue is generated from work created for and commissioned by brands while the remaining 15% comes from producing for other artists or syncs. Neither Sarkar nor Sickflip mentioned streaming as a revenue source.
50-60 (of 800) –
Number of television channels that pay licensing fees to IPRS
Publishing income
90%
The amount of the songwriting credit claimed by some big-name artists when working with multiple lyricists and composers. “There is a vast difference, sometimes, we’re worlds apart when it comes to dealing with music publishing,” said Taylor Jones, the founder and CEO of the Hello Group when asked about the differences between working in India and elsewhere on a panel titled ‘Bridging Cultural Divides Through Collaboration. He elaborated: “In the rest of the world, five writers in a room that equally collaborate, contribute means you divide the splits five ways. Over here, sometimes you’ve got artists because they’re big, they’re like, I’m taking 90% of it. That can burn bridges. I’ve been in sessions with some of the biggest artists in India and there’s a studio manager who wrote all of the Hindi lyrics [or] all of the Punjabi lyrics and because this artist is a star, [they’ll] pay him a couple of hundred bucks if he won’t get the credit. It’s unbelievable. If that mentality is brought into international collaborations, the international collaborators are going to stop very quickly.”
70%
The proportion of revenue publishing rights licensor the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) earns from digital sources such as Meta and international and Indian DSPS like YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Hungama Music and the soon-to-shutter Wynk Music, with which it recently closed a deal. Among the Indian audio-streaming services, it has yet to enter into a licensing agreement with JioSaavn, shared CEO Rakesh Nigam.
14,000
The current membership of IPRS, which has gone up from 3,500 five years ago.
50-60
Number of television channels that pay licensing fees to IPRS out of a total of approximately 800 stations airing in India.
58% –
The share of Indian regional-language content in the country’s overall music market
Indian regional-language music
58%
The share of Indian regional-language content in the country’s overall music market, according to Siddhartha Roy, the CEO of Hungama Digital Media and Entertainment, in his keynote on the Growth of Languages. “It’s a myth that Hindi drives [it],”
30%
Proportion of music consumption in Malayalam attributed to a sub-genre called mappila, a type of Islamic folk song in the language, said Roy.
30%
Proportion of music consumption in Malayalam attributed to Christian music, he added.
60%
Proportion of music consumption in Odiya attributed to devotional music, shared Roy.
40%
Proportion of music consumption in Odiya attributed to folk music, as per Roy.
