Artists inflate their fees, festivals hide their losses, sponsors spin reach numbers, platforms mask payouts, and the most unspoken truth about music right now is that almost nobody is honest about the economics holding it together.

Take artists: it’s common to hear a headline number for a show fee — “X lakhs” or “X dollars” — that doesn’t actually reflect reality. Behind the curtain, the figure is often padded with conditions: free travel, afterparty appearances, or merchandise guarantees. In some cases, it’s a bluff, shaved down in private negotiations, while the inflated figure becomes the one repeated in the industry, and the perception of value becomes currency. In electronic music, promoters have warned that spiraling fees are threatening the very survival of smaller circuits.

Then there are the festivals. Every year, we see press releases about “record-breaking sales” or “sold-out” events, but rarely a transparent breakdown of what it costs to put the event on. Production, security, logistics, artist travel, insurance — the overheads are massive. The narrative is always one of growth and success, because admitting losses would puncture the myth. The truth is, many festivals only survive because brand money or government subsidies plug the gaps, and some run at outright deficits, hoping perception alone keeps them relevant.

Sponsors, meanwhile, are complicit. Post-campaign reports are filled with words like “potential reach” and “engaged impressions”—  numbers that look glossy on a PDF but don’t hold up to scrutiny. Passive scrolls, duplicated users, recycled posts — they all get bundled into the figure. Brands know this, but few demand genuine accountability. Everyone is incentivized to play along: the artist gets a headline, the brand gets a slide deck, and nobody checks whether the campaign actually converted fans or sold anything.

And then there are the platforms — the least transparent players of all. Spotify’s Discovery Mode, for instance, asks artists to accept a 30 per cent royalty cut in exchange for more algorithmic placement. Critics have called it “a form of payola.” Streaming farms inflate numbers at scale, with some estimates suggesting up to 10 percent of global plays are fake. In the U.S., the Mechanical Licensing Collective has been accused of allowing duplicate registrations and weak anti-fraud systems that divert royalties away from rightful creators. And worldwide, artists remain frustrated: surveys show seven in ten are dissatisfied with streaming payouts.

So why does everyone keep quiet? Partly because opacity has been normalized. Contracts have always been complex, royalty statements unreadable, backend clauses hidden. Asking questions gets you branded as naïve or difficult. Promoters and labels wield more leverage, and artists risk losing deals by pushing too hard. Even managers burn out under the weight of constantly negotiating in a fog. The safer choice is to smile, nod, and repeat the official line.

And in a market like India, where the industry is still finding its shape, perception is often treated as reality. Looking successful matters more than being successful, because hype creates leverage: it gets you booked, sponsored, or playlisted. We’re stuck in an attention economy where clout can outweigh craft, and where the illusion of momentum is often valued more than tangible, sustainable growth.

But silence has a cost. If artists, promoters, sponsors, and platforms all operate on inflated or obscured numbers, how do we measure what’s actually sustainable? What does “success” even mean if the economics are fiction? The industry keeps dressing itself up as healthy, but under the makeup, it’s riddled with contradictions.

The real fix isn’t glamorous — but it’s necessary. Festivals and promoters should provide itemized post-event reports to artists and sponsors, not just press releases. These reports should cover actual ticket sales versus comps, production and logistics costs, sponsor deliverables, and the net profit or loss. A handful of independent promoters in Europe have started trialing this as part of their artist contracts; there’s no reason India or North America shouldn’t follow suit. Governments can mandate transparency codes like the UK’s 2024 initiative on music streaming. These codes require labels, publishers, and platforms to share clearer royalty statements, provide accessible contract summaries, and disclose how revenues are split between different rights holders. Platforms should explore user-centric payout models that align royalties with what individuals actually listen to, instead of the current pooled system. Strengthening metadata systems would plug the billions lost each year to duplicate claims and unmatched royalties. Brands, meanwhile, should require third-party audits of campaign performance rather than rely on “potential reach” reports.

Artists and managers also need collective leverage. In the U.S. and Europe, unions such as the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), and the United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) have been instrumental in advocating for fairer contracts and improved working conditions for music professionals. In India, though, where most independent artists operate without that kind of protection, there’s an urgent need for associations that have the power to enforce fair pay, contract transparency, and workload standards.  Without this, burnout will keep being mistaken for proof of success.

And perhaps most importantly, the people with influence — managers, promoters, and headline acts — need to normalize honesty. When a major artist admits to taking a loss on a tour or a brand openly shares a disappointing campaign result, it doesn’t weaken them; it sets a precedent that honesty won’t end a career.

These fixes are not about killing hype. They’re about building a system that can last beyond hype cycles. Until then, the money myth persists. We’ll keep reading about inflated fees, record-breaking sales, billion-stream milestones, and brand “impact” — while the people who make the music quietly wonder why they still can’t make rent.

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Merch has always been more than fabric and ink. For fans, it’s memory and identity; for artists, it’s supposed to be one of the few levers they control in the income stack. In many parts of the world, merch has matured into a business model, not just an afterthought. MIDiA Research projects that the global music merchandise and physical goods market will reach $16.3 billion by 2030, underscoring the growing importance of merchandise to the artist economy. Meanwhile, AtVenu’s 2023 settlement data shows that, on average, small and mid-tier artists generate eight times more in one night’s gross merchandise sales than in an entire year of streaming royalties. That contrast alone explains why global tours are now as strategic about merch tables and online drops as they are about the music itself.

If you want a sense of how powerful this culture can be, look at K-pop. Lightsticks, t-shirts, and collectibles have become billion-dollar drivers for the genre. Fans routinely pay $80 or more for Bluetooth-enabled items that double as both a concert prop and a badge of loyalty. The culture is so ingrained in the zeitgeist that buying official merch isn’t seen as optional; it’s almost part of the ticket price.

In India, merch is still treated more as a novelty than a necessity. Despite a booming live music scene — Reuters reported over 27,000 live events in 2024, a 35 per cent increase year-on-year — artist merch rarely generates meaningful income. The infrastructure is patchy, fan habits are still forming, and the economics are stacked against independents. Yet recent developments hint that this may finally be starting to change.

Take AP Dhillon, who just announced his One of One India tour this December. Along with eight arena-scale dates, his team confirmed that official merchandise will be sold directly alongside tickets. That detail matters because it signals a shift: merch isn’t being treated as a side table in the foyer, but as part of the concert’s business plan. When a star with Dhillon’s cross-border reach embeds merch in the fan journey, it normalizes the practice.

Other artists have tested the waters in their own ways. Prateek Kuhad has long been associated with having a “MERCH” tab on his official site, and past runs included vinyl and apparel via partners like Ambient Inks and The Souled Store. But as of now, his store doesn’t list active products — highlighting just how inconsistent and fragile artist-driven merch ecosystems are in India. Divine, by contrast, tapped into corporate backing. During Budweiser’s Kolkata event, his show featured exclusive Budweiser merchandise as part of the live activation, a brand-backed model that seeded merch culture through sponsorship muscle.

The hip-hop community has also started experimenting. Seedhe Maut has released limited merch runs — including their “Shutdown” T-shirt drop and the Nayaab limited line — which sold out quickly among their fiercely loyal base. These examples prove that when artists lean into merch thoughtfully, fans respond. But the scale is still tiny compared to the revenue the merchandise generates abroad.

So what’s holding India back? Part of it is cultural. Unlike in the West or in K-pop fandoms, Indian listeners aren’t conditioned yet to see buying a ₹1,000–₹1,500 t-shirt as an act of support. For many, it feels like an optional luxury, not an essential part of being a fan. Without that mindset shift, even the most beautifully designed hoodie ends up as deadstock.

The financial realities make it worse. Producing quality merch requires upfront capital — minimum order runs, good fabric, and reliable printing. Independent artists often can’t afford the risk. Price sensitivity means that lowering costs often leads to cheaper quality, which undermines repeat sales. Raise the price to cover margins, and you risk alienating your audience. It’s a lose-lose equation many artists avoid altogether.

Then there’s distribution. E-commerce in India is efficient in metro cities but inconsistent in Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns, where much of today’s fan growth is happening. Handling logistics, returns, and sizing issues is exhausting for small teams. At live shows — the place where merch sells best globally — artist stalls are often sidelined in favor of sponsor activations. And without visibility, merch simply doesn’t move.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. There are solutions the Indian industry can adopt if it takes merch seriously. Ticketing companies could integrate merch into presales and bundles, turning it into part of the event flow rather than an afterthought. Platforms like The Souled Store, Comet, and Redwolf could develop small-batch, artist-friendly solutions that don’t require big upfront spends. Independent collectives could pool resources to create shared fulfillment hubs for smaller artists, reducing costs. Festivals could mandate dedicated artist merch areas, creating visibility and sales opportunities. And most importantly, artists themselves can reframe the narrative: merch isn’t swag, it’s support. When fans buy a shirt, they’re directly funding the music they want to keep hearing.

The stakes are high. India’s live music economy is expanding at breakneck speed, and brands are pouring money into concerts and festivals. If merch doesn’t evolve alongside it, the country risks leaving a major revenue stream on the table — one that could make the difference between survival and sustainability for independent artists. Until the flywheel turns, merch here will remain what it is today: a space full of creativity and potential, but still waiting for the infrastructure, habits, and industry vision that could turn it into a powerhouse.

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Hip-hop is as much about what you see as what you hear. In India, the visuals of rap have undergone a dramatic shift — from gritty gullies captured on handheld cameras to glossy productions with LED screens, pyrotechnics, and brand-heavy stage designs. As the culture grows, its visual identity is being reshaped by international influences and rising budgets, raising important questions about authenticity, access, and who gets to define what hip-hop looks like.

The earliest wave of independent Indian hip-hop was visually raw. Artists filmed in their own neighbourhoods, often with little more than a phone camera or DSLR. The aesthetic matched the music’s urgency—direct, unpolished, and rooted in the streets. It wasn’t just a choice; it was a necessity. Long before that underground broke through, the 1990s had Baba Sehgal, whose campy, tongue-in-cheek videos—bright TV-studio sets, exaggerated choreography, pop-parody humor—put rap on Indian screens as a pop novelty rather than street reportage. 

Those later indie videos built a sense of community and relatability, making the culture feel immediate and real. But as rap moved from underground to mainstream, the visuals began to change. Through the 2010s, more Bollywood-oriented players like Badshah and Yo Yo Honey Singh leaned on high-gloss, party-centric formulas—bottle service and luxury inserts—while the independent scene kept pointing cameras at their own blocks, crews, and daily grind. 

Music videos today often lean into cinematic polish, featuring stylized lighting, choreographed performance shots, luxurious backdrops, and high-definition edits that mirror the global standard set by American and UK hip-hop. Even underground artists now face the pressure of keeping up, as slick production becomes the norm rather than the exception.

On stage, the transformation is just as stark. Hip-hop shows in India once meant intimate clubs, gullies, small venues, or college gigs, where the energy relied on little more than a mic and a crowd. Now, major festivals and arena concerts are designing hip-hop sets with the same ambition as EDM or pop acts. Travis Scott’s India sell-out earlier this year underscored how global stagecraft is setting expectations—heavy production, giant screens, and explosive effects. Indian rappers stepping into those spaces are adapting quickly, with live shows that look more like international tours than grassroots gatherings. A good example is Aaqib Wani’s stage design for Hanumankind at Lollapalooza India 2025 and Coachella, featuring live drummers and infusing local details throughout the creative direction.

The shift has its benefits. High-quality visuals elevate artists, making them competitive on global platforms like YouTube and Instagram, where first impressions are often visual. A well-produced stage show can open doors to international bookings and festival slots. But it also creates barriers. Artists without label or brand support struggle to afford elaborate sets, stylists, or production teams. The divide between those who can project a polished image and those who can’t is widening, even if the music is equally powerful.

There is also the question of whose vision is shaping these aesthetics. Are artists leading their visual storytelling, or are directors, sponsors, and event organizers imposing templates borrowed from Western models? When every video starts to look like a global rap clip, and every stage show mirrors Coachella aesthetics, the local textures of Indian hip-hop risk being overshadowed. The danger isn’t in borrowing global language, but in losing the distinctiveness that made the culture here feel alive.

The future of Indian hip-hop visuals may depend on balance. Artists like tricksingh, Divine, Hanumankind KR$NA, Karan Aujla, and Dhanji (among others) are already merging high production with rooted identities in clear ways. Tricksingh’s “F*cker With the Flow” frames a personal comeback as a maximal visual statement: directed and edited by filmmaker Shabad Sarin, the video spans 20 distinct set-ups (including a purpose-built akhada wrestling ring) and even places the artist alongside his father—spectacle anchored in family and Punjabi lore. His newer “Taaj,” released via Def Jam India, keeps the scale high while centering his Punjabi voice and in-scene creative control. 

KR$NA is also leaning into international-grade gloss without losing Delhi grit: “Who You Are,” featuring UK rapper Aitch, arrives with a sleek, performance-forward video directed by Teeezy and a companion visualiser credited to indie art teams—proof of cross-border polish built inside desi workflows. On the live front, KR$NA’s recent college-fest and arena clips show the ramp-up in stagecraft—larger LED canvases, tighter camera direction, and crowd-call moments structured like global rap tours—while still riding his catalog’s lyrical attack. 

Karan Aujla is pushing a full visual world around P-Pop Culture: the new “I Really Do” video (album cut with Ikky) is choreographed and directed by Bosco Leslie Martis. It’s a mainstream pop move which feeds back into a tour design that has scaled from India to the O2 London run, with arena-sized screens and pacing that mirrors North American hip-hop shows. Dhanji, meanwhile, keeps his home city Amdavad (as he likes to say it) on screen even as budgets rise: watch “Chamkili,” shot inside a local mela and built around the whirling Chakdol ride—every cut feels bigger, yet the backdrop is unmistakably Gujarati. His album RUAB extends the same idea in long form, treating Ahmedabad like a cinematic protagonist and drawing on 1970s Indian film textures for a rooted, auteur visual mood. The challenge, for all of them, is making sure this evolution in gloss doesn’t sand off the rough edges and community feel that gave hip-hop its first power.

If Indian hip-hop is going to keep growing on its own terms, the next step is intention. Festivals and promoters need to treat rap sets as headliner-grade productions by default, not as plug-ins to a generic festival grid. That means proper stage time (kudos for Lollapalooza India for giving Hanumankind a prime-time slot), full access to screens and lighting, and crews who understand rap pacing, call-and-response, and the way a DJ and hypeman shape a show. It also means filming these sets well—multi-cam captures, decent mixes, and quick turnarounds—so the moment lives beyond a night and helps the scene travel.

Directors and designers can push the grammar forward, too. The most compelling new work isn’t just bigger; it’s specific. It uses the city like a character, lets everyday spaces carry the story, and folds in regional references with context rather than as props. They might look like interludes that show rehearsal rooms and mohalla corners, stage backdrops that borrow from local print, textile, or mural traditions, and choreography that feels like the artist’s own circle—not a template flown in from elsewhere.

Access has to be part of the plan. A small pool of grants for video treatments, open calls for stage designers from outside the usual metros, and guaranteed tech for openers (LED time, a basic lighting file, rehearsal slots) would lift an entire tier of artists without massive budgets. None of this requires pyrotechnics; it requires a baseline of care and a willingness to credit and pay the people—DOPs, editors, lighting ops, set builders—who turn songs into images.

Because the measure of progress here isn’t just how bright the screens get or how loud the cannons are. It’s whether the visuals still carry the pulse of the places that made this music possible, whether the crowd can point to the frame and say: That looks like us.

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One of the music industry’s worst-kept secrets is that opening acts are rarely paid fairly. Across clubs, festivals, and even international tours, younger artists are expected to perform for little or nothing, with the promise of “exposure” dangled as compensation. It’s a global problem, but in India—where protections are virtually nonexistent—the practice is especially damaging.

In 2024, The News Minute reported how independent bands and musicians across India continue to struggle in ticketed concert markets, often playing to half-empty venues despite the frenzy that surrounds global acts like Coldplay. That gap highlights a central truth: exposure does not automatically translate into career growth or financial security. For many opening acts, these unpaid or underpaid slots create more strain than opportunity.

The pattern is consistent across India’s live music economy. Everyone else in the chain—the headliner, promoter, venue, sponsors, and crew—is compensated for their work. Opening acts are the exception. They rehearse, travel, and perform, but often walk away with very little or nothing. The assumption is that they are “lucky” to share a bill, when in reality, they are subsidizing the industry with unpaid labor.

This imbalance mirrors wider trends in the Indian music ecosystem. Session musicians and backing vocalists—the invisible hands behind chart-topping songs—are still not receiving royalties or credit, even though their work drives commercial hits. Business Standard reported earlier this year that “many session musicians in India still fail to receive royalty and credit.” A June 2025 Radio & Music piece echoed the same concern, noting how unsung hitmakers behind Bollywood and Punjabi blockbusters remain unpaid. If even proven contributors to hits are being undervalued, it is little surprise that opening acts are expected to work for free.

Meanwhile, the broader money flow is undeniable. The Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) reported a 42% jump in collections in FY 2024–25, crossing ₹700 crore in performance royalties. Clearly, there is money in the system—the question is how it is distributed. The fact that opening acts still walk away unpaid shows just how skewed priorities are.

Globally, the situation is a little better. In the U.K., the Musicians’ Union publishes recommended minimum rates—£189.55 for a single gig in a venue under 200 capacity, plus rehearsal pay—but grassroots musicians often report being offered far less. A London School of Economics study found jazz musicians across London and Paris were still regularly exploited through low pay and unstable contracts. Even in developed markets, opening acts remain the most precarious link in the chain.

This is why the idea of a minimum wage for live performances is overdue. It doesn’t have to be extravagant nor uniform across continents, but there should be a baseline under which fees cannot fall. Whether it’s ₹10,000 for a club slot in India or £150 in a UK pub, a minimum wage would recognize that building a career takes time and precision—but musicians still need to pay rent along the way.

There are workable ways to implement it. Promoters could allocate a small percentage of ticket sales to every act on the bill, not just the headliner. Sponsors could earmark a portion of budgets for supporting talent, reframing it as cultural investment. Venues could bundle minimum artist payments into bar sales, ensuring that even small nights don’t leave openers unpaid. Ticketing platforms like SkillBox, District, and BookMyShow could build minimum artist fees into their registration systems. None of these solutions are radical—they are adjustments that reflect professionalism.

The counterarguments are familiar: margins are thin, tickets are underpriced, and audiences are still developing. But those arguments don’t justify unpaid work. If young artists cannot afford to sustain themselves, the pipeline of future headliners dries up. India’s indie and hip-hop waves of the past decade produced dozens of promising names, but many disappeared due to financial instability long before they reached their peak. Globally, the attrition rate is similar. When only the privileged can afford to work for free, diversity suffers and the industry’s future shrinks.

Change will require more than goodwill. Artists need to feel empowered to demand fair compensation instead of accepting “exposure” as a default. Managers must set minimum expectations and refuse deals that undercut them. Promoters and festivals need to see compensation not as charity but as an investment in their own ecosystems. And industry bodies—from IPRS in India to unions abroad—must publish baseline guidelines, just as the U.K.’s Musicians’ Union does. Transparency alone would give young acts leverage in negotiations.

Let’s be honest here, exposure doesn’t pay the bills. Until the music industry accepts this and institutes a minimum wage for performers, opening acts will remain the most undervalued workers in music. And with every artist priced out of their own career, the future of live music gets smaller.

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If you follow the marketing, every other festival claims to be “green” now. Reusable cups, compostable forks, and a ban on plastic straws. But the biggest chunk of music’s carbon footprint doesn’t fit neatly in a tote bag. Instead, they’re the flights routing global tours, the car trips fans take to venues, the diesel that still powers a lot of staging, and the endless stream of T-shirts and vinyls cranked out to keep the business solvent. The question is not whether the industry can be sustainable in theory; it’s whether our rules, incentives, and day-to-day decisions actually measure up to the real sources of emissions.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: audience travel. The non-profit REVERB’s 2025 analysis of 35,000 fans in the US and Canada found that fan travel creates 38 times more emissions than artist/crew travel, hotels, and gear haulage combined. Eighty percent of fans primarily drive, and a “typical” 10,858-cap arena show racks up approximately 527 tCO₂e from audience travel alone. That dwarfs what happens on stage.

On tour, Coldplay remains the highest-profile case study: the first two years of Music of the Spheres cut direct tour emissions by 59 per cent per show compared to their 2016–17 stadium shows, as verified by MIT. That gain came from cleaner power, lighter freight, better routing, train travel, fan incentives, and an unusually transparent dashboard everyone else can copy. It is not “net zero,” but it is measurable progress at stadium scale.

Policy is shifting too, especially in the EU. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) kicked in for the first cohort on FY2024 reports (published in 2025), forcing large companies to disclose standardized climate data. Its sibling, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), came into force in July 2024 and requires in-scope companies to adopt climate transition plans aligned with 1.5°C (the target limit for global warming as outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement). This means big European promoters, venue groups, and parent companies face strict reporting and planning requirements, and not just glossy pledges.

In the US, federal climate disclosure is in a state of limbo after the SEC paused its 2024 climate rule amid litigation and then stopped defending it in court in 2025. But California is moving ahead on its own: new laws (SB-253 and SB-261) will force thousands of large companies doing business in the state to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. Starting in 2026, companies must report their direct emissions (Scope 1 and 2), and by 2027, they’ll also need to include indirect emissions (Scope 3), along with climate-risk reports every two years. For music businesses that tour in California or sell products there, these rules will apply and make their environmental impact more transparent.

India’s approach is different: we do have national rules, but they cover parts of the problem. The Plastic Waste Management rules banned a specific list of single-use items from July 1, 2022. Meanwhile, the rules for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a policy to make manufacturers responsible for the complete lifecycle of their products, are tightening, particularly around plastic packaging. The Solid Waste Management Rules also make event organizers responsible for segregating waste and handing it over to authorized collectors. That’s progress on materials, even if enforcement varies by city.

In India, the top 1,000 listed companies must now file the SEBI Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) annually. Starting with the top 150 companies from FY 2023–24, a more detailed version called ‘BRSR Core’ is being phased in. Companies are required to report their direct emissions (Scope 1 and 2). Reporting emissions from their supply chains and other indirect sources (Scope 3) is encouraged but remains voluntary. That’s real pressure for listed conglomerates in music-adjacent services—but many Indian promoters are private, so live-music carbon numbers still rarely see the light of day.

There are bright spots on the ground. Bengaluru’s Echoes of Earth brands itself as India’s “greenest” festival and has scaled audience education and segregation. Magnetic Fields says it recycled or composted over 95 per cent of approximately 10.2 tonnes of waste in 2023 with sustainability firm SKRAP. Lollapalooza India has trialed hydration stations, rice-husk cups, and large volunteer crews for sorting. These are genuine improvements to material flows and on-site operations. The next step is to wrap them into transparent carbon accounting—especially for travel and power.

Power is where policy already bites. In Delhi-NCR, GRAP restrictions during severe air-quality episodes limit or ban diesel gensets for non-essential use, directly affecting temporary venues and outdoor shows. That nudges events toward grid connections, hybrid battery systems, and cleaner fuels when pollution spikes. It’s a public-health rule, not a climate rule, but it changes how shows are powered in India’s biggest media market.

Merch and formats matter more than we care to admit. A basic cotton T-shirt generates approximately 11.5 kg of CO₂e (depending on fiber and dyeing), with bulkier poly blends producing even more. Vinyl’s footprint is finally being benchmarked by the industry: a 2024 working report from pressing-plant associations shows why resin, energy, and packaging choices matter, challenging the “vinyl is a rounding error” myth. None of this says “stop selling shirts or records.” It says design for lower impact, cut overproduction, print closer to the fan, and tell people what you’re doing.

So, where does India stand compared to Europe and the U.S. in this matter?

Europe is moving from voluntary to mandatory. CSRD now standardizes climate reporting, CSDDD compels transition plans, and several countries are tightening single-use bans and reuse systems at venues. The US is more uneven: federal rules are stalled, but California’s SB-253 and SB-261 will soon set nationwide disclosure expectations, while grassroots groups like REVERB keep pressure on promoters to act. India has made visible gains through plastics regulation and corporate disclosure, but without sector-specific requirements, live music’s biggest emissions—travel, touring logistics, and power—remain largely unaddressed.

What would a pragmatic Indian playbook look like this season? The first step is to count what actually counts. Publishing a simple footprint per show or festival, with travel separated from on-site emissions, would bring much-needed transparency. Audience travel remains the hardest nut to crack, but solutions exist: bundling metro or bus passes with tickets, creating “rail plus entry” packages, pricing parking to reflect its true cost, and rewarding carpools or EVs. Power is another priority. With Delhi-NCR’s GRAP restrictions already limiting diesel gensets during pollution spikes, promoters should move towards grid tie-ins, hybrid battery towers, and cleaner fuels rather than scrambling at the last minute.

Other changes can happen on-site. Menus and materials matter more than organizers often admit: plant-forward catering can shrink footprints significantly, and reusable cup systems at scale have already proven effective. Merchandise needs to be rethought along the same lines—on-demand or local print runs, clear footprint disclosures, and evergreen lines that avoid fast-cycle waste. Even vinyl is now under scrutiny, with new industry-wide benchmarks showing how resin, energy, and packaging choices add up. Beyond operations, adopting standards like ISO 20121 (an international framework for sustainable event management) gives festivals a credible framework to ensure sustainability outlives individual staff or sponsor cycles. And even private promoters can mirror BRSR Core basics—Scope 1 and 2 data, Scope 3 boundaries, and annual notes that disclose grid factors. The throughline is simple: measure, publish, and direct decisions towards the real sources of emissions. India’s festivals have already made visible gains in terms of plastics and waste. The next frontier is travel, power, and honest accounting. If we get that right, we won’t need to call ourselves “green.” The numbers will do it for us.

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Music is said to be a reflection of the times it was written in. Social changes dramatically altered the course of music in the last century. In Western music, certainly, the age of European classical music—or art music as it is popularly known—was not as dramatic as before. Perhaps the tempo of life was changing as well. Still, classical music remained the gold standard, at least in the West. Nothing could replace classical music.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln put an end to slavery in America. Within a few years, the community of African slaves integrated into the mainstream American society—not quite as equals yet, but certainly a step out of their abhorrent state of slavery. This freed community of African Americans was incredibly musical, expressing themselves in churches, funeral bands, celebrations, and in everyday forms of entertainment. As these sounds got more streamlined and organized, they emerged as the early stages of jazz. It’s this movement that has shaped most of the music in the last century, and continues to do so today. Let’s try to connect the dots.

As early as 1900, Ragtime, vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, music hall songs—all essential components of what would emerge as jazz—were shaping the mass entertainment landscape. African American musical concepts were spreading across America. Although classical music was still socially more dominant and seen as more prestigious, the early sounds of jazz were much more appealing to the larger public. This gave rise to a whole new realm of popular music.

By the 1920s, jazz became the music of young Americans and Europeans. The decade was dubbed ‘the Jazz Age,’ inspiring literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby being a prime example) and shaping a new cultural zeitgeist.

Musically, W.C. Handy and vocalist Bessie Smith with the Blues, and Louis Armstrong laid a strong foundation for later genres with their jazz. These sounds were fresher and more dynamic, dominating the cultural scene by the early 1930s.

The 1930s were the decade of the Great Depression. The colossal Wall Street collapse of 1929 devastated the economy, leading to unemployment, bankruptcies, and social upheaval. In America, the introduction of Prohibition— which also contributed to a rise in crime and the birth of the Mafia—only compounded the misery of the American people. The silver lining, perhaps, was the diversion offered by dance halls as low-cost places to drown one’s sorrows. Jazz blared through these dance halls, played by some of the era’s most eminent big bands. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, and other legendary jazz musicians led these bands, cultivating a sound that came to be known as pop music at the time. In many cases, the music was broadcast live on the radio, turning jazz songs into household favorites. This music spread across Europe and beyond.

It’s interesting to note that African American bands arrived in India by the mid-1930s and were very popular. However, in contrast to the patronage of the poorer sections of the American masses, it was the elite, often the European communities in the then-Bombay and Calcutta, that patronized establishments featuring these jazz bands. Soon, the jazz music culture spread into the local music community, and a large number of fine Indian jazz musicians were heard playing in urban cities. This sound of jazz even entered the film industry—Bollywood quickly embraced it, and several music directors, notably C. Ramchandra and later R.D. Burman, introduced this sound in the Hindi-dominated film music industry. (This digression can be elaborated on in a future Jazz Corner!) 

Jazz has become a narrative; a continuous journey of interaction and improvisation. Each generation listens to, absorbs, and reshapes the music rather than following a set text. Charlie Parker in the 1940s may have never played with Louis Armstrong, twenty years his predecessor, but was nevertheless influenced by his rhythmic flow and vitality. Still, Parker’s music remained distinctly original. Similarly, John Coltrane and Miles Davis took the structure of Parker’s music and produced entirely different but unique sounds. These building blocks and bridges are a hallmark of the jazz trend, and continue to connect with contemporary music even today. 

While popular vocalists like Nat ‘King’ Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett used the backing of jazz bands, the direct transition from jazz to more contemporary popular music is not so obvious. However, the introduction of electronic instruments has leapfrogged jazz into street music. In his release “Chameleon,” jazz pianist Herbie Hancock played his keyboards for a type of fusion which had the roots of funk and modern R&B, before eventually leading to hip-hop. In the 1990s, Guru’s album “Jazzmatazz” used jazz samples linking jazz and rap.

Another group, US,3, in their very popular album “Hand on the Torch” used jazz riffs and horn solos to back the recited sounds of rap. It worked in connecting many jazz listeners with rap and vice versa. In recent times, Kendrick Lamar in “Alright” from 2015 has used prominent contemporary jazz musicians such as Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington to great effect.

It’s a good journey so far, keeping pace with the huge changes in society that technology has brought. But it is good to know the roots. As the great and wise Duke Ellington always maintained, “If you want to know where you are going, you must know where you have come from”.

The post Jazz Corner: How 20th-Century Jazz Shaped Popular Music appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

The music industry today leans on brand sponsorship more than it cares to acknowledge. Festivals, tours, and even media coverage are sustained by it. In India, it’s a widely acknowledged truth that ticket sales can’t support large events, and public arts funding is scarce. That means brand partnerships are the backbone of the live music economy, but their role has shifted. Ten years ago, a sponsorship usually meant a logo on a stage or a modest booth. Now, the same budgets are expected to deliver fully branded arenas, immersive activations, influencer lounges, and months of social-first content. The demands have grown, the money hasn’t, and that imbalance is inflating a bubble.

This isn’t just a perception problem—it’s something people inside the industry are openly acknowledging, if not loudly. At the Sponsorship: Brands vs. Festivals View panel during the PIN Music Conference 2024, moderated by musician Ida Prester, speakers including Bojan Kochovski (McCann Skopje), Dušan Kuzmanov (Dev9t), Vladimir Rukavina (LENT Festival), and Evelyn Sieber (Reeperbahn Festival) unpacked the growing imbalance. One speaker put it bluntly: “At the end of the day, it’s the same amount of money that goes into our pocket. But it’s the workforce. You need more people.” The budgets haven’t scaled, but the demands on organizers have, forcing them to overdeliver, often at the expense of financial sustainability.

That’s not to say sponsorship can’t be constructive. At its best, the right partner can help elevate the culture itself: Bacardi’s decade-long tie-in with NH7 Weekender shaped the country’s most recognizable festival identity (until 2024), Johnnie Walker’s lounges at Lollapalooza India became genuine gathering points rather than just marketing sites, and globally, Absolut’s multi-year investment in Tomorrowland has enabled large-scale art installations and sustainability projects that would have been impossible otherwise. As some panelists at the PIN Music Conference 2024 noted, the healthier sponsorships are the ones that take a longer view—multi-year deals or investments that align with the artistic vision of a festival—rather than one-off asks for quick visibility. It’s these longer partnerships that allow organizers to build stability instead of scrambling year after year.

In India, the shift is clear: the long-running Bacardi NH7 Weekender has shed its title sponsor, with The House of McDowell’s Soda stepping in from 2024 after Bacardi ended its decade-long run. Sunburn, once touted as Asia’s answer to Tomorrowland, is now stitched together with liquor, telecom, and lifestyle tie-ins. Lollapalooza India’s 2023 debut leaned heavily on brand presence, from Nexa lounges to Levi’s zones, where activations often rivalled the lineup in visibility. Meanwhile, Bacardi has gone further, pouring nearly 50 per cent of its Indian marketing budget into experiential activations, effectively producing cultural events rather than just attaching its name to them. AB InBev India has started building its own festivals, moving beyond sponsorship to ownership in a bet to prove that brands can replace promoters in creating live experiences.

Globally, the same story is playing out. At When We Were Young 2025 in Las Vegas, 7-Eleven wasn’t just a sponsor; it became the festival’s co-headliner, securing naming rights and flooding the site with branded zones, giveaways, and themed hangouts. At Coachella, beauty and fashion brands like Guess, Rhode, and Sol de Janeiro have built installations and influencer compounds that function as marketing sets more than cultural spaces. At the end of the day, sponsorship has moved beyond brand visibility and become more about brand immersion. But the cost of building that immersion is falling squarely on festivals and promoters, without a matching rise in what they’re paid. One counterexample often cited is Heineken’s long-term relationship with Primavera Sound in Spain, a sponsorship that has not only underwritten costs but also invested in stages and sustainability programs, showing how alignment can create credibility instead of clutter.

The financials bear this out. Sponsorships already accounted for 60–70 per cent of Indian festival revenues in the early 2010s, and while recent industry reports suggest ticketing and other revenue streams have grown, sponsorship remains the dominant lifeline. What has changed, however, is the relative value of that money. Brands are indeed spending more than they did a decade ago, but the inflation of deliverables—from fully branded arenas to months of digital content—means a crore today buys far less than it once did. In other words, sponsorship fees have grown, but expectations have grown faster, leaving festivals squeezed despite larger nominal spends.

In the same period, production costs, artist fees, and audience expectations have skyrocketed. In the UK, nearly 40 festivals were canceled in 2025 alone, citing rising costs and stagnant sponsorship inflows. The Guardian noted that even established festivals are buckling under “fewer headline acts and rising costs.” India faces the same pressures, though the fallout is quieter. Smaller operators rarely issue formal cancellation notes—they simply disappear, unable to satisfy brand expectations on flat budgets. One of the few to speak openly was Alboe By The Beach, which stated “rising costs” as the reason for shutting down.

Meanwhile, sponsors themselves are consolidating power. According to a WSJ report, Live Nation’s adjusted operating income from sponsorships was $764 million for the fiscal year 2024, up 13 per cent from 2023’s $675.1 million and more than three times the $207.7 million it made in 2014. The money is there globally, but the pressure falls disproportionately on smaller and mid-tier festivals, especially in markets like India, where multinational sponsors dictate terms.

For artists, the consequences are equally fraught. Stages are not only programmed around fan demand but also around sponsor preference. The “wrong” aesthetic or a politically risky image can take an artist out of the running even before their music is considered. Editorial platforms, too, are complicit, commissioning branded IPs more readily than independent criticism, because survival depends on advertiser budgets. And yet, brand-funded platforms have, at times, provided rare space for risk-taking. Spotify’s Radar program and Coke Studio’s regional showcases illustrate how sponsorship can create opportunities that wouldn’t exist otherwise when the investment is tied directly to artist development.

The fragility of this system has already been exposed. When Red Bull pulled the plug on its global Music Academy and Red Bull Radio in 2019, it left hundreds of artists stranded and erased one of the most ambitious music development platforms overnight. Converse ended its Rubber Tracks program, which had offered free studio time to independent musicians. Even Bacardi has fluctuated in its Indian investments from year to year, leaving promoters in the lurch when budgets were redirected elsewhere.

And yet, silence reigns. Artists don’t want to risk losing deals, promoters can’t afford to alienate sponsors, and media outlets rely on advertiser support. Everyone plays along, hoping the illusion of stability will hold. But bubbles don’t last. India’s music tourism market is projected to grow from $2.46 billion in 2024 to $13.36 billion by 2033, but that growth is built on an unstable foundation: brand infrastructure rather than independent sustainability. When brands inevitably pivot—to gaming, esports, or influencer culture—the scaffolding collapses.

The uncomfortable truth is that festivals and promoters often give in to brand demands simply because they have no choice. Artists and media are complicit because survival depends on it. But the longer we pretend this is stability, the harder the crash will be when the bubble bursts. And when it does, it won’t just be logos that disappear. It will be stages, careers, and cultural spaces that may never return.

The post What The Music Industry Doesn’t Talk About Enough: The Sponsorship Illusion appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

Last month, this column raised the issue of safety at music events, for crew, attendees and artists alike, highlighting how the “music industry is built on fragile, informal ecosystems—freelancers, indie promoters, short-term contracts—where power dynamics skew heavily towards those in charge.”

On a recent podcast episode of tech and culture platform Mashable Middle East, Mumbai-origin, Dubai-headquartered event company Ferriswheel Entertainment’s founder Shubhra Bhardwaj made a rather tone-deaf admission about how she “sacrificed” her personnel at an event in Hyderabad to keep it going until 3 am (which is prohibited by law for music events in India).

The now-deleted video, viewed by Rolling Stone India, shows Bhardwaj casually (and happily) admitting to sending off event security staff, bartenders of the venue, and even stage managers to be “picked up” by police in Hyderabad and later paying their bail to have them released from detention. The conversation was picked up by a few Indian promoters who were appalled at the bluntness with which event companies treat on-ground crew for the “show-must-go-on” approach.

This is not entirely new in India’s haphazardly evolved live events industry. Given the way gig organizers take calls in high-stakes situations, this Hyderabad case may not even be an anomaly, but an open admission of what has perhaps always been taking place for years now. If you zoomed out a bit further, India’s music industry on the whole—from labels to event companies to music schools, artist management firms, venues, music tech platforms, and more—is not without its share of bad apples.

According to a new report by workforce solutions company NLB Services, India’s concert economy is estimated to generate nearly 12 million temporary jobs by 2030–2032, creating demand for production, logistics, security, hospitality, and digital media staff.

This often-lauded “concert economy” that even governments are now flogging may create millions of jobs, but most of those will be low-protection, temporary gigs where workers have no safety nets. Hence, growth without regulation is quite simply exploitation. This is, understandably, a very scary prospect for any younger entrants who see a viable career in music, whether as artists, teachers, managers, studio staff, in label services, booking, and other fields.

In 2018, an investigation into entertainment company Only Much Louder and co-founder Vijay Nair revealed how it had failed to create a safe space for employees, specifically women. The company went on to sell its music festival IP, NH7 Weekender, to Nodwin Gaming, marking a shift for them and leading to Nair receding from the public spotlight.

Smaller, newer companies like labels and marketing firms, while registered as companies, often operate within their own framework without any legal infrastructure that employees can turn to. Often, contracts themselves are drawn up to bring in more consultancy roles than anything full-time or permanent in a bid to reduce costs while also minimizing accountability when it comes to workplace needs like healthcare, working hours, and etiquette. Like the age-old story of unpaid dues between artists and venues, some Indian music companies have also been called out for delayed payments and underhanded practices like poaching or sudden termination.

Festivals and events may go off smoothly for fans, but often, behind the scenes, there’s chaos—shouting matches and firefighting incompetence that is all often conveniently categorized as “part of the job.” Sure, some dynamic fields like live events require thinking on one’s feet and finding solutions, but it doesn’t mean one needs to withstand being humiliated or told off by higher-ups for not having it together, only for it to be normalized and forgotten the next day. The frantic hustle culture is also partly at fault for glamorizing unhealthy work practices as the norm. The bar is so low that getting paid on time or contract terms being agreed upon mutually is a tall order. How long can India’s music boom last if the people building it—freelancers, teachers, technical crew—are burning out or being discarded? Labels are chasing targets in an industry where they are rarely well-defined or constantly shifting, which means it’s a high-pressure job that can easily turn toxic.

There are good practices being set by several companies, no doubt. Among the bigger players, a brief look at reviews on Glassdoor, Indeed, or AmbitionBox for these companies tells you just how much they care about employees and freelancers. Some hover just above the 3 on 5 ratings. Among the smaller companies, a good indicator is perhaps when employees simply stick around for years—that’s when you know they’re being looked at as more than just a cost to the company.

The way forward involves more support groups that the workforce in the music industry can turn to, more redressal policies, more accountability and more unions. India’s music industry can tout professionalism all it wants in public speeches and press releases, but it still feels optional for the stakeholders when it comes to operations. If the industry wants global credibility, it needs to start by protecting its people, not sacrificing them.

The post What The Music Industry Doesn’t Talk About Enough: Unregulated Workplaces appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

In today’s music industry, it feels like posting on social media is part of the job description. Between announcing releases, teasing behind-the-scenes shots, and performing on Reels, artists are expected to be full-time content creators. It’s no longer enough to just make music—you have to feed the algorithm, respond to comments, and remain relentlessly visible. But what happens if you don’t? Can you survive as a musician today without playing the Instagram game?

For many independent artists, especially in India, the idea sounds unthinkable. These platforms are the few tools they have to reach their audience directly, particularly without major label backing. But the flip side of that access is a burnout cycle that few want to talk about. A growing body of research now confirms what artists have been saying for years—that the pressure to constantly create content is hurting their mental health and compromising their work.

In a 2025 study led by researchers at Goldsmiths and University College London (UCL), musicians described social media as a “content factory”—an environment that made them feel emotionally disconnected, anxious, and compulsively engaged, often at the cost of creativity. The paper, published in Frontiers in Psychology, featured interviews with 12 UK-based artists, who admitted that social media often made them feel “inferior,” triggered unhealthy comparisons, and took time away from songwriting and rest. One participant said, “I come off stage and the first thing I do is check my phone to see what people said online. It’s no longer about how the show felt—it’s about how it looks.”

This aligns with broader mental health data. A separate December 2024 study from UCL, involving over 15,000 UK adults from different nationalities, found that posting on social media—not browsing, not lurking—was linked to increased psychological distress one year later. Participants who posted daily reported significant declines in well-being, even after accounting for pre-existing mental health conditions. In contrast, those who consumed content passively showed no such decline. The lead researcher noted that the pressure to share publicly may fuel anxiety and identity stress, particularly among people whose careers depend on performing for an audience. Furthermore, a global study across 29 countries also found that excessive social media use is associated with lower well-being and higher psychological distress, especially in places where it’s widely used.

And it’s not just emerging artists feeling this strain. Addison Rae, one of the most recognizable faces of TikTok-era pop culture, has spoken openly about stepping back from the internet after feeling “so misunderstood” online. She described how the constant push to stay relevant made her feel disconnected from her real self. Actor Taron Egerton, while promoting his new show She Rides Shotgun, told the press that being back online after a hiatus made him feel “worse,” and that he intended to leave again soon. Their honesty speaks to something deeper—that even those who seemingly benefit most from social media can find it emotionally draining and creatively suffocating.

The music industry hasn’t made stepping back easy either. Let’s be honest: visibility is as close to currency as it gets. Algorithms reward frequency, not quality. Artists often feel like they’re being penalized for not posting enough—losing playlist spots, falling off festival shortlists, or being passed over for campaigns. Even artist managers and PR teams now factor in engagement rates before pitching for gigs. The assumption is: if you’re not online, you’re not working.

In India, this pressure is heightened by the absence of alternative discovery mechanisms. TikTok is banned, terrestrial radio lacks depth, and press coverage is very limited. For many artists, their Instagram profile acts as a business card, showreel, and booking portal all rolled into one. From college festivals to brand campaigns, follower count is often the first filter applied. Yet, some musicians are silently beginning to resist.

Take Mumbai-based rapper The Siege, whose sparse Instagram presence stands in stark contrast to his powerful live performances. Somehow, Siege has built a loyal following not through daily posts but through consistent, meaningful releases and word-of-mouth buzz. His set at GullyFest 2024 was a breakthrough moment—not because it trended online, but because it resonated in the room.

Similarly, Prateek Kuhad, one of India’s most-streamed indie artists, maintains a stripped-down Instagram presence. He rarely posts day-to-day updates or Reels. Despite that, his music has reached global audiences, landed him a spot on Barack Obama’s 2019 playlist, and sold out tours across the world. His success offers a powerful counter-narrative to the idea that visibility must be constantly shoved in our faces to be effective.

Even Bollywood playback powerhouse Arijit Singh keeps his engagement minimal. He avoids direct fan interaction, rarely posts selfies or personal moments, and doesn’t use his social media to push his presence. And yet, he remains one of the most listened-to artists in the world (in fact, he has more followers than Taylor Swift on Spotify).

These artists haven’t gone fully offline, but they’ve reclaimed control of the pace. They’ve drawn boundaries on what their digital lives owe the world. And while their results may not always be viral, some industry voices see this as a healthy recalibration. Prachee Mashru, founder of THIS? Agency that works with artists such as Shah Rule, Ritviz, and Gini says, “I think a lot of artists today feel torn. On one hand, I understand the need to evolve and use the tools available—social media is as much a part of PR and marketing now as physically dropping off CDs or USBs once was. But it’s also a whole different game: you’re not just focused on making music anymore; you’re constantly thinking about the content that will market it, how it will be perceived, and how to keep people engaged.”

Opting out isn’t an option for everyone. For most independent musicians in India—especially those from regional, Dalit, queer, or economically disadvantaged backgrounds—Instagram is often the only gateway to discovery. It’s where editors, promoters, and booking agents first encounter your name. What this reveals is a deeper issue: too much power has been ceded to platforms that were never designed with artists in mind. Visibility has become synonymous with viability. Follower counts now serve as a proxy for value, and content cadence is often given more weight than craft or consistency.

The current system incentivizes performance over process, packaging over patience, and audience growth over artistic exploration. Social media is framed as a solution, but for many artists, it’s another arena in which they must constantly compete, adapt, and sacrifice peace of mind.

It’s worth asking: why has an industry built around creativity become so tethered to platforms built around performance metrics? Why are artists expected to maintain a digital persona to validate their real-world output? And why does choosing rest or privacy still feel professionally risky?

If music is to remain a space for truth-telling, experimentation, and emotional honesty, then the systems that support it must also evolve. That means expanding definitions of success beyond visibility. It means supporting models where artistry doesn’t rely on feed frequency. And it means respecting an artist’s right to log off without disappearing because not every musician wants to be an influencer. And they shouldn’t have to be.

The post What The Music Industry Doesn’t Talk About Enough: Social Media Burnout appeared first on Rolling Stone India.

For an industry built on the back of creative labor, it’s astonishing how many artists remain in the dark about how they’re paid. Streaming now makes up over 67 percent of recorded music revenues worldwide, according to the IFPI’s Global Music Report. And yet, for most artists, monthly payouts from streaming royalties barely cover a night out, let alone a livelihood.

Despite big figures—Spotify paid over $10 billion to rights-holders in 2024, while Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube have each paid over $1 billion annually to the music industry in recent years—most artists earn only a fraction of pennies per stream. Once that money is split between labels, publishers, distributors, and managers, the actual creators are often left with the smallest slice of the pie.

What’s even more alarming is the lack of transparency across these platforms. Spotify publishes a yearly Loud & Clear report, but other major players like Apple Music and YouTube Music offer far less public data. Artists often rely on opaque dashboards from their distributors or labels, with little visibility into how revenue is calculated, where streams occurred, or how royalties are split. In India, multiple artists speaking to Rolling Stone India on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy said that platforms like JioSaavn and the now-defunct Wynk Music’s provide backend data that is inconsistent and mired in delays, while international aggregators sometimes don’t report earnings from local Digital Service Providers (DSPs) at all. Many independent artists say they’re forced to chase their own data across platforms, only to find it incomplete, inconsistent, or misreported.

“There has been some progress toward transparency in the process, which is visible on the artist dashboards we have access to,” Rahul Sinha of UnderTheRadar tells me. “However, a fundamental question remains: are the current systems truly serving independent artists?” He points out that while there is increasing transparency, the challenge lies in the complex web of intermediaries between artists and DSPs. “Will all of them become transparent too? The fact is that there are a lot of people in the pie who create this opaqueness, and that doesn’t help the artist.”

Even within platforms, royalty rates can vary widely. YouTube, which remains the most widely used platform for music consumption globally, pays one of the lowest per-stream rates, estimated between $0.0007 and $0.001, depending on ad revenue and user engagement. Apple Music, on the other hand, has publicly stated it pays about $0.01 per stream on average—nearly double Spotify’s average rate—but that’s still not enough to make a dent unless you’re racking up millions of plays. The real issue is the pro-rata model used by nearly every major streaming platform: instead of your subscription fee being divided among the artists you actually listen to, it goes into a massive pool and is redistributed based on overall market share. That means if you only stream independent artists, your money still ends up rewarding the biggest global stars.

Producer Karan Kanchan, who’s worked with both labels and indie artists, reflects on how little artists are initially told about royalties. “When I started off, there wasn’t much awareness about this stuff. I wouldn’t even be able to fight or ask for it—things like percentages and royalties and everything like that. When working with labels or artists, it would always feel like, okay, I’m getting a bigger opportunity to work with a big rapper or I’m getting a bigger opportunity to work with a big label.”

He says he first began to understand the business side of music—like percentages, master splits, and publishing—through workshops organized by Gully Gang and its co-founder Chaitanya Kataria. “That’s what I learned on the go, and it has been pretty fair,” he says.

Still, even when royalties are accounted for, payment delays are common. Kanchan says, “I think with label songs, even if you have royalties, by the time you actually start getting paid, it’s going to take a long time because there are big-budget music videos, big-budget marketing campaigns that go behind the song. The royalties are first used to recoup those costs, and only then do you get anything out of it. So I think it’s still a long way for me to make money out of royalties.”

Some reforms are underway. Streaming platform Deezer has begun implementing a user-centric payment model in France, while Tidal trialed a similar approach in 2021 with mixed results. These models haven’t scaled globally, largely because they threaten to shift income away from the superstars and major labels who dominate current payouts. In India, once a bright spot for indie curation, platforms like Gaana and JioSaavn now increasingly seem to prioritize film music and catalog hits, reinforcing the same gatekeeping that streaming once promised to dismantle.

Even regulatory efforts haven’t caught up. The U.S. Music Modernization Act and the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, which aimed to simplify how songwriters and artists are paid in the streaming era, were steps in the right direction. But disputes like the 2024 Spotify–MLC bundling controversy—where Spotify successfully argued that its Family and Duo plans qualified as “bundles” and paid lower royalties—show that even in mature markets, the definition of fair royalty calculation is still up for debate. In regions like South Asia, where collecting societies (royalty tracking and distribution bodies) are under-resourced or riddled with governance issues, musicians often have no idea what they’re owed—or whether their songs are being monetized at all.

In India, however, the situation has improved through the work of the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS)—the only registered copyright society representing lyricists, composers, and publishers. Since rebooting under new leadership in 2017, IPRS has become one of the world’s fastest-growing collection agencies. According to data from their annual reports, revenues rose from ₹46 crore in FY 2017–18 to ₹314 crore by FY 2021–22, and ₹564 crore in FY 2022–23. That year, over ₹300 crore was distributed to more than 7,500 members. IPRS has also launched digital dashboards to give members real-time access to usage and royalty data and has invested in AI-driven metadata systems to identify unclaimed royalties. Public campaigns like “Credit the Creators” and “My Music, My Rights” are helping more artists understand how to protect and collect their earnings. It’s not without flaws, but it does show what’s possible when infrastructure, transparency, and education align.

Alongside collecting societies, new players in the Indian music business are also stepping in to provide better financial tools for artists. MGMH Groove, a growing distribution and artist services company, recently partnered with Snafu to offer royalty advances to artists and labels. This move, reported by Musicplus.in, is part of MGMH’s shift toward expanded services that go beyond just distribution, now including marketing support, data analytics, and upfront financial backing for creators. For artists still navigating delayed royalty cycles or irregular payouts, such options offer short-term liquidity and increased control.

Meanwhile, the rise of streaming fraud adds another layer of chaos. In 2024, a Danish criminal reportedly earned over $290,000 through fraudulent streams before being caught. Meanwhile, honest artists struggle to get playlisted or promoted unless they’re backed by major labels or pay for visibility through platform-specific “promotion tools,” which often trade discoverability for reduced payouts.

Sinha notes the broader systemic imbalance: “It’s clear that independent artists are excluded from the conversation. They are at the mercy of the commercial interests of these platforms. We live in a digital world, so in that sense, yes, streaming royalties are important. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that somewhere it is taking away an artist’s ability to economically compete in this field.”

For independent artists, self-releasing may offer better control. “If you’re releasing your music independently, it’s much easier to take care of all these royalties and amounts,” Kanchan says. “Now even distributors like Madverse or TuneCore help artists split their royalties online. At the point of collection itself, it splits to the artists according to their contributions, which is a really good thing for managing royalties with collaborators.”

He adds, “It’s going to be more important to get people educated about it because when I started off, I had zero clue, and I didn’t know how much money I was leaving on the table. Having these matters in the contract while you’re signing for songs—like bi-monthly or once-a-year reports of the royalties—is something that you can fight for in the contracts.”

This isn’t just about low per-stream revenue—it’s about an ecosystem designed to benefit platforms, labels, and catalog owners, while sidelining the artists who power it. Musicians deserve access to clean, auditable data: where their streams are coming from, what their exact payout rate is, and how intermediary parties are cutting into it. Without that, streaming remains a game of scale, not sustainability.

Platforms will argue that they’re doing more than ever—Spotify says over 10,000 artists earned $100,000 or more in 2024, and Apple has increased its payouts in line with subscriber growth. But these headlines only reflect a small elite. For the vast majority of artists, streaming isn’t a career model—it’s marketing. And until the economics and data structures shift to prioritize creators, not just shareholders, the industry will continue to thrive off the very people it undervalues most.

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