India’s Paid Music Streaming Market Poised to Double by 2028
subscriber base is set to roughly double by 2028, and as an audio nerd who lives inside playlists, that headline hit me right in the right headphone.
A joint EY–Indian Music Industry (IMI) report titled How India Listens, Streams and Pays for Music, released Friday in Mumbai, projects the country's paid streaming users will climb from an estimated 14 million in December 2025 to somewhere between 28 million and 30 million by 2028. That's not a tech-industry number, that's a signal that more listeners are finally about to hear what proper bitrate, proper mixing masters and proper mastering actually sound like.
The listening gap is wider than the subscription gap
The report, built on a survey of over 15,000 smartphone users, paints a picture that anyone watching the streaming charts already suspects. Nearly 96% of smartphone users in India listen to music, and four out of five of them spend more than an hour a day inside audio apps. Yet only 38% have ever paid for a music streaming service, compared to 86% who have paid for a video OTT platform. Put bluntly: the country is consuming music like an obsession and monetising it like a free demo reel. With roughly 14 million paid music subscriptions sitting against more than 200 million paid video subscriptions, the imbalance isn't subtle. It's the difference between hearing a track and actually hearing it.
Why people upgrade, in audio terms
Here's where the report gets genuinely interesting for anyone who cares about timbre, vocal texture and the difference a good master makes. When asked why pay, existing subscribers pointed to ad-free listening, playback controls and better audio quality. Not "more songs." Not "a bigger library." Quality of the signal. That's the phrase that matters. Around 61% of respondents said they would pay for music if free alternatives weren't available and pricing stayed reasonable, which tells you the friction isn't love for music, it's the habit of treating audio as background rather than as a craft.
What the labels and platforms are saying
EY India's Ashish Pherwani framed the moment as a "generational opportunity," pointing to smartphone penetration, GDP growth and Gen Z's ease with digital payments as the tailwinds. Universal Music India and South Asia's Jay Mehta pushed the conversion angle: bundling, easier payment paths and stronger differentiation between free and premium tiers. Blaise Fernandes, president of IMI, tied the whole thing back to creators and to preserving India's musical heritage, which is the unsaid reason any of this matters at all.
What to listen for next
If you're the kind of listener who already flips to "high quality" the second a streaming app offers it, this report is your vindication. Watch for tighter bundling between music and telecom wallets, more aggressive free-to-paid conversion nudges, and — the fun part — labels investing in catalogue that actually rewards a good pair of IEMs. Replay value on the Indian streaming market is just getting started.
