How Regional Music is Reshaping the South Asian Streaming Landscape
's streaming market delivered a 29% jump in royalties for domestic artists in 2025, according to Spotify's annual Loud & Clear report, with regional-language catalogues driving the bulk of the growth.
The data, released at a Spotify-hosted event in India, lands against an industry debate over how artificial intelligence will reshape cultural production and copyright frameworks. The numbers signal a continuing reweighting of the South Asian music market away from a handful of dominant languages.
Regional languages carry the market
Spotify's report shows Telugu royalties surging more than 120% year-on-year, Marathi up nearly 50%, and Bengali up roughly 40%. Haryanvi music registered the sharpest acceleration, growing close to sevenfold in streams between February 2023 and February 2026, placing nearly 100 Haryanvi acts within Spotify India's top 5,000 artists and making it one of the fastest-growing language catalogues on the platform. Skill development minister Jayant Chaudhary, who released the report, described the gains as evidence that linguistic diversity is converting into measurable economic value across the country's creative sector. Every major Indian language category contributed to the 29% aggregate growth, per Spotify's methodology.
The AI counterweight
At the same event, Prasar Bharati chairman Prasoon Joshi argued against framing AI as artificial intelligence, contending that the technology operates on already-expressed human data and risks marginalising living creators. Joshi characterised unexpressed creative potential as avyakta — what remains inside creators and has not yet surfaced in data form — and argued this reservoir is precisely what AI cannot access. According to coverage of the event, he called for targeted preservation of endangered languages and musical traditions. Actor-turned-politician Khushboo Sundar, speaking on a panel, added that emotionally resonant songs cannot be authored by machines alone — a position that frames the current royalty boom as fragile if automation displaces originators. Joshi separately confirmed he is heading a working group on cinema, the creative economy, and AI, with discussions underway on government and private-sector partnerships.
Structural read for the global market
The India data point sits within a wider industry conversation about cultural transmission in the streaming era. Recent coverage — including a Britannica retrospective on rock's role in social change and musiculture.in's August 2026 dispatch on the ALL ABOUT MUSIC X conference — frames the moment as a recalibration of how music is produced, monetised, and protected. Analysts tracking market share across South Asia note that algorithmic push favours catalogue depth and language-specific metadata, rewarding labels that invest in regional A&R over headline-chasing releases. For the broader global market, the implication is structural: regional-language streaming is no longer a peripheral growth lane but a primary contributor to platform royalty expansion. Stakeholders watching recoupable thresholds and catalogue valuations should treat regional-language streaming share as a leading indicator, not a footnote. For readers mapping the broader distribution landscape this season, the latest guide to new movies and streaming premieres to watch at home offers adjacent context on what platforms are prioritising.