Spotify royalties from Indian artists rise 29% as regional music goes global

110

TL;DR:

Spotify royalties generated by Indian artists rose 29% in 2025, led by regional languages. Telugu jumped over 120%, while overseas listeners contributed more than 40% of royalties, strengthening the case for Indian music as an export business.

Article:

Spotify royalties generated by Indian artists rose 29% year on year in 2025, with regional-language music, not just Hindi, driving the increase. Telugu royalties surged more than 120%, while Marathi rose nearly 50% and Bengali close to 40%. More than 40% of royalties generated by Indian artists came from listeners outside India, making the growth an export story as much as a domestic streaming story.

The scale matters because regional music is converting discovery into monetisation across languages. Malayalam royalties increased more than 30%, Hindi nearly 30% and Tamil 20%. Indian artists accumulated nearly 335 billion Spotify streams in 2025, equal to more than 20 billion hours of listening, while first-time global listener discoveries rose 14% to about 12.8 billion.

Dhruvank Vaidya, Spotify India’s head of music and podcasts, said, “Indian artists accumulated nearly 335 billion streams on the platform last year, over 20 billion hours of music, with royalties up 29%.” The data suggests that audience fragmentation across languages is becoming commercially useful rather than a distribution handicap, particularly when recommendation systems can surface songs outside their home markets.

Still, Spotify’s royalty figures should not be read as artist take-home pay. The company says, “We don’t pay artists or songwriters directly, we pay rights holders,” with payments then governed by individual label, publisher or distributor agreements. Loud & Clear reports royalties generated on Spotify, not net income retained by performers or songwriters.

The trend also has continuity: Spotify said close to 50% of royalties generated by Indian artists in 2024 came from outside India, while Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu royalties had each more than doubled since 2021. For labels and independent artists, the practical implication is clear: regional-language catalogues now deserve export-focused release, playlist and marketing strategies from day one.