Local music dominates listening in India according to a joint study published by IFPI and the IMI, the Indian recorded music industry association. IFPI designed and ran the Music Consumer Study, 2019 across 21 of the world’s major music markets, exploring the music habits of consumers worldwide. India was a key part of the study and the Digital Music Study, 2019 explores in greater depth some of the insights taken from the responses of the 3,000 surveyed Internet users in India aged between 16-64.
India’s favourite music genres
Domestic music genres dominated preferred music genres in India. Film and various forms of other Indian music were the favourite genres of more than half of all respondents. New Bollywood music (released over the last 12-18 months) was listened to by 60% of survey respondents while 53% listened to vintage Bollywood songs. Asked to pick a single favourite genre, new Bollywood catalogue was chosen by 19% respondents with classic Bollywood songs chosen as a favourite by 16%. This year’s study also revealed burgeoning consumption in the form of regional ‘oldies’, i.e. older catalogues of music in languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, etc, collectively ranking 7th in the list.
Key features of music listening in India
- The society in India has a strong engagement with music across ages and platforms; 80% of surveyed internet users identified themselves as ‘music fanatics’ or ‘music lovers’, higher than the corresponding global average of 54%.
- Compared to their global counterparts, the surveyed respondents in India showcased a greater preference to visually engage with music with the time spent on video streaming services accounting for 28% of the average user’s total listening time in India, i.e. 5.3 hrs/week, compared to the global average of 19.6% or 3.5 hrs/week
- Radio engagement in India is high and on an increasing trend. On average, 86% of surveyed respondents used radio (live or on demand) to consume music. Engagement with radio formats was equitable across all age-groups, though consumption was particularly higher in the 35-44 age group with 90% users opting to listen to music on the radio in the past three months.
- Music listeners aged 16-44 are more likely to pay for audio streaming as they prefer an ad-free experience, the autonomy to listen to anything at any time, convenient form of music streaming and access to a one stop shop for all their respective music preferences.
- Paid audio subscribers show greater engagement with music with an average user spending 2.5 hrs/week listening to music through paid audio streaming versus 2 hrs/week through free audio streaming. However, paid audio subscribers are few in number with only 61% surveyed respondents consuming music through the premium tiers on offer by the digital platforms.
- In India audio streaming comprised 39.4% of time spent listening to music across the three methods (video streaming, audio streaming, and radio) but returned 71.8% of the share of revenues generated by them. In contrast, radio was responsible for 21.7% of listening time but a share of just 2.9% of total revenues from the three music listening methods.
- An emerging form of copyright infringement, social media piracy has emerged in India owing to developments in the app space. Certain apps make available on their platforms unlicensed sound recordings owned by record labels in India and seek immunity under ‘safe harbour provisions to escape liability.
To download the full report (25pp) go here.
