India has a large music audience and a small paying core. Ormax Media’s September 2026 public summary estimates 227.3 million monthly audio streamers, of whom 15 million pay for audio streaming. That is about 6.6% of the audience, calculated from Ormax Media’s September 2026 figures. For a label or distributor entering India, that gap matters more than another headline about billions of plays. A stream proves a listener was reached. It does not show how much money was available to divide between a service, a recording owner and the songwriters.
The Ormax summary is a useful fresh measure, but its full 2026 report is available by subscription, so this article uses only the figures Ormax made public. A separate 2026 Indian Music Industry (IMI) and EY report puts the challenge in sharper commercial terms. It estimates 14.4 million paid music subscriptions at the end of 2025, based on industry discussions and dashboard reviews, while explicitly warning that platforms do not publish subscriber counts. The two estimates measure different dates and may use different definitions. Their shared message is the size of the paying minority, not a reliable month-by-month growth rate.
What the survey actually says about payment
The IMI–EY report’s RedQuanta survey questioned 15,373 smartphone users in March and April 2026. The IMI–EY 2026 sample was 60% metropolitan, 60% male and 80% aged 16 to 40, so its percentages should not be treated as a census of every Indian listener. In the IMI–EY 2026 sample, 96% listened to music on a smartphone, and 38% said they had ever paid for music streaming, including through bundles. “Ever paid” is a much looser test than holding an active subscription. Confusing the two would make the addressable paid market appear much larger than Ormax’s current-user estimate supports.
Among survey respondents who had never paid, 42% said free YouTube met their music needs, 33% said subscriptions cost too much, and 20% saw little difference between paid and free app versions, according to the IMI–EY 2026 report. Respondents could select more than one reason. These are obstacles to conversion, not three mutually exclusive customer segments. For a catalogue owner, they also mean that putting a track on every service solves availability but leaves the question of paid value unanswered.
The same 2026 survey found that, among respondents who had ever paid for music, 41% paid themselves, 25% accessed a family plan and 15% used a telecom bundle. The report says bundles can prompt use without creating strong attachment to the music service as a product in its own right. This is the key distinction for anyone forecasting revenue from a distribution deal: a bundled listener can be a genuine listener while contributing a very different amount to the licensing pool from a directly paying customer. The survey does not disclose what each bundle pays rights holders, so it cannot justify a single India-wide payout per stream.
A low price ceiling changes the forecast
IMI–EY’s 2026 report models 28.8 million paid music subscriptions by 2028, up from its 14.4 million estimate for 2025. The IMI–EY 2026 report pairs that scenario with subscription revenue rising from ₹10 billion (about US$111 million) in 2025 to ₹22 billion (about US$244 million) in 2028. These are projections, not signed platform commitments or guaranteed label receipts. IMI–EY’s 2026 report expects telecom and commerce bundles and tiered offers to help, with average revenue per paying user around ₹1 a day (about US$0.011). The IMI–EY 2026 glossary uses ₹90 to US$1; every dollar conversion in this article applies that report convention rather than a live exchange rate.
That forecast deserves a practical reading. More paid accounts can raise the aggregate pool even if the amount from each account remains modest. Yet the value of an individual recording still depends on its share of listening within the relevant service and plan, the rights granted, the contract’s revenue share and any intermediary fees. IMI–EY provides no platform-by-platform licence terms. A distributor who turns its subscriber forecast directly into a royalty forecast is skipping the step where the money is allocated.
The report’s willingness-to-pay question is especially easy to misuse. In the IMI–EY 2026 survey, 61% said they would consider paying if free options ended, the price were reasonable and a subscription came with another popular service. The IMI–EY 2026 report says respondents’ suggested price averaged below ₹100 a month (about US$1.11), and cautions that this answer was often a reaction to a hypothetical loss of free access. It is not evidence that the survey’s 61% will buy a music plan at today’s prices. For a release budget, a conditional survey answer belongs in a scenario, not the base case.
The rights owner’s accounts tell a different part of the story
Tips Music’s unaudited filing for the quarter ended 30 September 2026 reported revenue from operations of ₹120.1 crore (about US$13.34 million), against ₹89.2 crore (about US$9.91 million) a year earlier. The Tips Music filing for September 2026 shows acquisition and in-house music production cost rising to about ₹12.1 crore (US$1.35 million) from about ₹5.8 crore (US$0.64 million), using its rupee-lakh line items. Business Standard’s 16 October 2026 account gives a broader company-reported content-cost figure of ₹26.2 crore (US$2.91 million), up from ₹13.3 crore (US$1.48 million). The difference in labels and amounts is a reason to keep the filing’s expense category distinct from the company’s broader content-cost measure.
Tips is a catalogue owner, and its total revenue includes more than one platform and mode of exploitation. Its quarter cannot be divided by India’s estimated audience to produce a per-stream rate. What the filing does show is the capital side of the business: rights owners can spend more on acquisition and production while waiting for new music and older catalogue to earn across years and uses. That investment cycle is far removed from the apparent simplicity of a play count.
Business Standard reported on 16 October 2026 that Tips released 73 songs in the September quarter, comprising 40 film and 33 non-film songs, based on the company’s results. A distributor assessing a regional-language deal should ask which recording rights are actually acquired, for how long, in which territories, and whether the release plan includes the local marketing needed to create repeat listening. The national subscription figures offer context. They do not price a Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi or Bhojpuri catalogue on their own. Nor does a YouTube view establish the revenue mix of a particular song.
Two royalty paths must be accounted for
Recording income is only one part of the ledger. The Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) says it collects and distributes royalties for authors, composers and publishers, including through overseas affiliated societies. Its explanation says a distribution needs both collected licence revenue and music-use data. A distributor’s delivery report for a sound recording is therefore not a complete statement of the composition income attached to that song. A label or artist planning an India campaign needs to know who administers each composition and whether the work’s ownership and identifiers can be matched to usage.
This is a separate question from the India desk’s recent examination of IPRS distribution rules. The issue here is the commercial gap between audience scale and a paying pool, and how to model the recording and composition routes without treating them as one cheque. The distinction is useful to an independent artist in Accra or Lagos: an India strategy can produce real discovery and modest recorded-music income while composition payments move on another timetable and through another administrator.
For now, the most defensible plan is to track India by service and plan type, distinguish paid from free and bundled usage where statements allow it, and compare receipts with the actual rights and territories supplied. Ormax’s September 2026 audience estimate shows the scale of the opportunity. IMI–EY’s 2026 survey shows why much of it remains free. Tips Music’s September 2026 filing shows that acquiring the catalogue to serve that audience costs real money before the return is known. India is a market worth entering, but a large listening total is the beginning of a revenue model, not the answer to one.
