From Chapell Roan’s Grammy acceptance speech to country star Jelly Roll’s viral video, artists seem to be calling out label deals more frequently now than in recent memory. But are they really that bad? Why do rising talents continue to aspire to sign them? And why did they get such a bad rep in the first place? And, in the light of all this how are they evolving their deal terms. These are among the things we discuss on this episode in which we also talk about the different types of offers out there and the career stage at which we believe an independent act should consider taking them. As always, we look at the key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on February 21, 2025.

In the streaming era, catalogue music - classified as songs that were released over 18 months ago - is doing better than ever before. It’s rare, however, for older tracks to crowd the top of the charts as they are right now. On this week’s episode, we discuss the reasons - both organic and strategic - as to why this is happening. As always, we look at the key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on February 7, 2025.

Will this be the year that sees more balanced gender representation among the biggest hits? Which Indian regional languages will grow? And can international artists regain some of the ground they’ve lost? We make educated guesses to provide answers for each of these questions on this episode in which we share how we think the charts will play out in 2025. As always, we look at key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on January 24, 2025.

With the Coldplay tour being all everyone is talking about this week, we revisit our conversation about India’s live music boom, the scramble for tickets, some of the highest attended international concerts and our predictions for which gig might top it next (did we get it right? You tell us in the poll after you hear the episode!). We will be back with a new episode soon and until then enjoy ‘Coldplay,Diljit and the frenzy for gigs.

PS: Our tally/discussion does not include electronic music gigs. We've used publicly available attendee numbers of live music events

It’s rare for a song from a web series to generate a hit of the same magnitude as a Bollywood or major label release. With “Ishq Hai”, the focus track from the third season of the Netflix show Mismatched nearing the top spot, we got Shilpa Sharda, director, Artist Services & Development at Believe, which marketed the music of the series, to tell us about how their unique campaign for the tune helped turn it into a smash. As always, we look at the key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on January 3, 2025.

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Shout out to Soham Sengupta who helped us edit this episode! To our fans who helped us with feedback, thank you!

On this special episode, we crunch data related to the most-streamed songs of the year, and discuss the genres, artists and languages that defined 2024 on the charts. Among the things we talk about are whether the I-Pop hype is real, how catalogue tracks are contributing to plays for film music, and the main differences between the year-end India top 50s on Spotify and Apple Music.

Links mentioned in the episode:

ttps://www.hollywoodreporterindia.com/features/columns/bollywood-music-in-2024-the-hits-that-ruled-playlists

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-pop-why-indias-music-industry-hoping-becomes-next-big-bpdwc/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgZl8OcSRhM

In any given week, hits by K-Pop acts are among the handful of international tracks on the chart. With “APT.” by Rosie and Bruno Mars rising to the top 20, and consequently becoming the highest-ranked non-Indian single on the survey so far this year, we got K-Pop journalist and founder of media agency Bridge Asia, Riddhi Chakraborty, to plot the rise of the genre in our country and discuss why chart rankings are so important to its artists’ fandoms. As always, we look at key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on November 29, 2024.

Three new entries as well as the biggest climber on this week's chart are remakes. Why are they so popular when they rarely improve on the original versions? On this week's episode, we discuss why labels love recreating older hits, whether they're mostly a Hindi film and pop music phenomenon, and how interpolations are a better option than remixes. As always, we look at key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey published on November 15, 2024.