Spotify has unveiled, for the first time, India-specific data from its annual Loud & Clear report, highlighting the audio streaming platform’s impact on the country’s music industry through local and global discovery and growth.
In 2023 alone, artists from India were discovered over 10 billion times by first-time listeners. Over the last five years, Spotify has deeply localised its playlists, industry collaborations, and consumer communication to bring India’s artists closer to their fans.
The key highlights are as follows:
Spotify has steadily increased the visibility and discoverability of local artists
Five years ago, nearly 70 percent of music consumption on Spotify in India came from international music. Today, more than 70 percent of music streams come from local music. This trend is evident on Spotify India’s daily Top 50 list, where, in 2023, 84 percent of the tracks were by artists from the country.
The rise in these artists’ popularity is also reflected in their monetary growth, with almost two-thirds of the Spotify royalties generated in India last year being attributed to local artists. During the same time, Spotify added nearly 8700 Indian artists to local and global editorial playlists, giving them access to a larger audience.
Artists from India are seeing an export success story as a result of Spotify’s global reach
It’s not just the editorial playlists. Spotify is enabling Indian artists to be discovered by listeners from across the world. Since 2019, consumption of music from Indian artists skyrocketed by over 2000 percent in international markets. Earlier this year, data from the streaming platform showed that A.R. Rahman, Alka Yagnik, Anirudh Ravichander, AP Dhillon, and Arijit Singh were the most exported local artists over the last five years.
According to Loud and Clear data, close to 40 percent of all royalties generated in 2023 by artists from India on Spotify, were from listeners outside of the market. The export growth comes mostly from countries such as the US, Canada, Indonesia, UAE, Turkey, Brazil, and Italy.
Local languages have seen immense growth owing to curation and industry collaboration
The number of languages in India make it a truly unique market for music. Punjabi, for instance, is one of the fastest-growing languages on Spotify in India, with 87% year-on-year growth of Punjabi music listeners in India in 2023 alone.
Besides Punjabi, Hindi and Tamil have witnessed exponential growth, with artists witnessing a collective increase in Spotify royalties by 271 percent, 390 percent, and 585 percent, respectively, since 2020. One look at the Spotify charts will show how artists from these languages, and even other languages, including Telugu and Malayalam, are peaking in consumption.
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