In a big push for Indian artists, music streaming application Spotify has released its India-specific data for the first time showing how Indian music is gaining prominence and wider acceptance worldwide. The platform has added nearly 8,700 Indian artists to local and global editorial playlists, bringing them to wider audiences. Five years ago, 70 per cent of the music consumption in Spotify India came from international music. But, in 2023, 70 per cent of its consumption came from local music. Spotify said that in 2023 alone, artists from India were discovered on the platform over 10 billion times by first-time listeners. Further, the report highlighted how Spotify has deeply localised its playlists through industry collaborations and consumer communications. Not only popularity, Spotify has also led to significant monetary growth for artists through royalties. According to the report, almost two-thirds of the Spotify royalties generated in India in 2023 were attributed to local artists. Local languages like Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam have registered significant growth owing to curation and industry collaboration. Punjabi is among the fastest-growing languages on Spotify in India with an 87 percent year-on-year growth of listeners in India in 2023. Spotify royalties for artists from Punjabi saw a growth of 271 per cent, Hindi witnessed 390 per cent, and Tamil saw 585 per cent. Beyond the boundaries Spotify is also endowing Indian artists with global reach by enabling them to be discovered by listeners from across the world. The report states that since 2019, the consumption of music from India has grown stupendously by over 2,000 per cent in international markets. According to the data from Loud and Clear, nearly 40 per cent of all royalties generated in 2023 by artists from India on Spotify were from listeners from other countries like the US, Canada, the UAE, Indonesia, Turkey, Italy, and Brazil. Similarly, earlier this year, another Spotify report stated that artists like AR Rahman, Alka Yagnik, Anirudh Ravichander, AP Dhillon, and Arijit Singh were the most exported local artists over the last five years.
