Hindi music is taking a bigger bite of the global music streaming pie with each passing year.
Among the top 10,000 global tracks, out of the top five languages listeners streamed music in in 2023 — English, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, and Japanese – only one grew, according to Luminate’s new report released on Jan. 10. That’s Hindi.
The share of Hindi-language listeners grew to 7.8% in 2023 from 6.1% a year ago.
Hindi-language music: Bollywood and independent
The Indian music industry is largely dominated by Bollywood soundtracks — Bollywood music made up 44% of Spotify’s top tracks, per data analyzed in the company’s The Indian Music Charts Podcast. And 2023 was a particularly good year for the Hindi film industry.
For one, Superstar Shahrukh Khan made an epic comeback with not one, not two, but three releases in Pathaan, Jawan, and Dunki. Then, blockbuster hits like Gadar 2 and Animal, and their soundtracks, found a place in listeners’ hearts and playlists.
Moreover, independent music has also been having a moment.
Indian hip-hop, with artists like King, DIVINE, Shubh, and Raftaar, continued to release new music. And not only did they find listeners, they found listeners who stuck around. The retention for hip-hop artists is between 70-80%, compared to 10-20% for other artists in the market, according to Edwin Charles Albert, the head of content and partnerships at telco Airtel, which owns the streaming site Wynk.
Then there’s New Delhi-based artist Anuv Jain, who completed a 10-city tour last year. His track Husn has quickly become a viral sensation, getting a boost from trending on Instagram Reels. The song is currently ranked #1 on Apple’s top 100 chart in India.
Person of interest: Arijit Singh
Arijit Singh, the top-streamed artist on Spotify in India for the three consecutive years now, was the 12th top-streamed artist worldwide in 2023. He was also the top-streamed artist on other platforms like Airtel-owned Wynk. His songs also dominated Apple’s India Top 100 and Amazon Music’s top 50 lists in the country.
In 2022, Bollywood playback singer Arijit Singh tallied more streams on the app than Beyoncé, Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vice president of markets and subscriber growth, told Billboard last year.
Listen to this: Arijit Singh’s most popular Bollywood song in 2023
Quotable: Indian music comes in a plethora of regional languages
“Until we came to India, most [of our] markets [were dominated by] one or two languages. The whole structure, from the teams to the way we work to how we look at recommendations, curation—every piece had to be re-looked at.”
—Amarjit Singh Batra, Spotify’s general manager and managing director for India
2024 prediction: Music streaming in other Indian languages will grow
Beyond Hindi music, Punjabi music is already getting on people’s radar in 2024.
Indo-Canadian singer AP Dhillon, who released a four-part documentary series on Amazon Prime last year, has been climbing up the charts. So has another Indo-Canadian artist Shubhneet Singh, known as Shubh, whose popularity has ballooned as his Cheques and No Love became big hits. Then there’s Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella last April, releasing new chart-topping music like Kinni Kinni
With the rise of so-called “pan-India cinema” — movies that release in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malyalam simultaneously — music is also being released in multiple languages instead of just Hindi. SS Rajamouli’s RRR, whose song Naatu Naatu beat Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Beyoncé at the Golden Globes last year for best original song, was one such song.
P.S. I don’t speak the language, but I prefer the Telugu version Kesariya from the 2022 blockbuster Brahmastra. Arijit Singh is great, but Sid Sriram’s Kumkumala hits different.