India‘s paid music streaming subscriber base could grow to between 28 million and 30 million by 2028, up from an estimated 14 million as of December 2025, according to the EY and the Indian Music Industry (IMI) “How India Listens, Streams and Pays for Music” report, released Friday in Mumbai.
The report draws on a poll of upward of 15,000 smartphone owners fielded in March and April, supplemented by psychometric research covering more than 2,200 consumers and discussions with industry executives.
The numbers underline a familiar paradox for the Indian music business. Some 96% of smartphone owners consume music, and 80% of them listen for more than an hour a day. Yet just 38% have ever handed over money for music streaming, bundled subscriptions included, versus 86% who have paid for video streaming services at some point. Dedicated digital service providers (DSPs) remain the preferred destination for structured listening, used by 60% of respondents, while 32% listened to music on YouTube – though YouTube remains the single largest platform for music discovery, driven largely by short-form video.
The report frames the shortfall as a legacy of India’s leap from physical formats straight to free, ad-supported streaming. In his foreword to the report, Blaise Fernandes, CEO of IMI, wrote that a “non-paid for music ecosystem eventually negatively impacts the creators and copyright owners,” arguing that record labels, DSPs and creators need to work together toward a tiered paid model. The report notes that India’s 14 million paid subscribers trail Brazil’s more than 30 million and the United States’ 106 million, and that China – whose music industry ranked behind India’s as recently as 2015 – has built a paid subscriber base of more than 171 million, propelling it to the No. 2 spot globally in streaming revenue.
