Music labels, grappling with slow growth in paid subscriptions and advertising revenue in the Indian market, are increasingly eyeing regional music catalogues to bolster libraries and returns. Times Music, Warner Music and Saregama have acquired regional catalogues recently. Such consolidation benefits both established players and smaller regional companies. Mint explains how:
What is in it for the bigger players?
Consolidation in India’s music industry could help national players by pooling resources, bolstering catalogues, and increasing bargaining power with platforms, advertisers and brands, senior industry executives said. It can enable access to shared marketing, technology adoption, and data-driven strategies that might otherwise be costly for individual players. Moreover, a unified catalogue offers better licensing opportunities, attracts larger deals, and improves discoverability for diverse music. As capital expenditure rises with increasing content costs, there is no way to make more content on one's own. Acquisitions or joint ventures, on the other hand, offer a one-time investment that allows for a stronger footprint in the market without having to create from scratch.
How do small companies benefit?
These moves illustrate how regional strengths can be scaled through strategic partnerships. They help unlock value by streamlining rights and royalty systems, expanding digital distribution, and bringing under-leveraged catalogues into the streaming mainstream while maintaining their cultural identity. Consolidation can act as a strong accelerator, especially for regional or mid-sized players that have valuable IP (intellectual property) and deep local roots but limited access to infrastructure, global platforms, or capital. Smaller labels, which are heavily dependent on streaming and YouTube revenue and are unlikely to operate at scale, are trying to make something out of their catalogues before the current wave of capital goes down.
Are there downsides to such acquisitions?
Bigger players entering regional markets can lead to a monopoly, inflating costs in the short term as they pay relatively higher sums to artists, which then triggers a correction. Success in these markets is culture-led and not driven by scale. Entering such regions without understanding cost and recovery structures can often result in commercially unsustainable projects, disrupting an otherwise stable language market overall.
What are the broader challenges driving these acquisitions?
Music labels are struggling to monetize their rights, often unable to even recover the amount they shelled out to purchase soundtracks, particularly those for a Hindi film album. Audio streaming platforms have lowered their pay rates (sum paid per stream for a song) by about half over the past year, as audience preferences shift away from music to other genres of entertainment such as stand-up comedy and podcasts on YouTube. But this decline in listenership, and the resultant fall in revenues have failed to move producers to lower the price at which they sell their film music rights to music labels, who in turn licence them to streaming platforms. That said, according to a Ficci EY report, the Indian music segment, measured as revenues earned by music labels from licensing and other income, grew by 10% to reach ₹5,900 crore in 2025.
Have such acquisitions paid off so far?
While there is no real data to prove acquisitions have been lucrative so far, the Ficci EY report said music labels are expected to continue consolidating, either to improve monetization or to de-risk against the rising investment required to acquire new film music. The focus of consolidation will be small but on relevant labels. The deals reflect a broader 2025 trend, according to the report, where labels and studios are prioritizing IP control, predictable content flow, and global monetization, rather than transactional soundtrack acquisitions.