Beyond the diaspora: Indian music artists are ready for a true global crossover

While Indian music artists regularly tour internationally and generate significant listenership and footfalls across Canada, the UK, parts of the EU, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, their traction is often limited to diaspora audiences. According to the Spotify Wrapped list for 2025, Arijit Singh was the only Indian artist to feature in global rankings.

Experts say Indian artists need to identify markets where their music can resonate and carve out strategies like thoughtful marketing, curated live experiences and the use of streaming platform data to tap into those regions.

The Ficci EY media and entertainment report 2026 said international audiences offer materially higher monetization than India’s domestic market. However, building an artist across markets overseas takes time and high‑profile cross‑border collaborations like Diljit Dosanjh and Camilo will increase, creating new pathways for Indian artists to reach global audiences, it added.

“Controlling attention is the major key,” said Anirudh Voleti, vice president of touring and artist management at OML (Only Much Louder). “Artists today are building their own communities across social platforms, Discord channels, WhatsApp private groups and more. Reels have been the medium through which most music projects have been discovered over the past few years. Algorithmic playlists on DSPs (digital streaming platforms) have also been helpful.”

Voleti said the onus of global success today lies majorly on artist managers and their teams. An artist management team needs to be multifaceted across aspects such as overall strategy, the creative and commercial development of artists and their music, marketing of the artist, booking live shows, building communities and merchandising.

“The diaspora is both why Indian artists do well abroad and why they plateau. You can sell out a room in London or Toronto on diaspora demand alone, which is good business, but it takes away any real pressure to win a listener who has no connection to India. Language gets blamed, but Latin and Korean music crossed over without switching to English,” said Himanshu Chowdhry, founder of Spectal, a marketing and talent agency focused on youth culture and live entertainment.

Vishal Mahajan, founder and CEO of Auraska Ventures, a new-age alternative investment and strategic advisory platform, said Indian music is fragmented across many regional languages, unlike a single unified identity such as K-pop.

Distribution of music is probably the easiest part. Rohith Sobti, curator and founder of The Shakti Collective, which is building a structured ecosystem for music, storytelling and cultural IP, said an artist can release a song globally from India with very little friction. The difficult part is getting someone in another market to discover it, connect with it and eventually become a fan.

“That requires a much more strategic approach to marketing and artist management. You need to understand which markets are responding to the artist, where the audience is coming from, what kind of content they are consuming and where the music is being discovered,” Sobti said.

The other challenge is that international growth cannot be treated as a one-song exercise. One song can travel because of an algorithm or a reel. Building an international artist requires consistency, catalogue, collaborations, live opportunities, content and relationships.

Sheetal Birla, general manager India, Live Your City by Fever Labs, said several Indian artists have demonstrated the potential of Indian music to connect with audiences beyond the country and the diaspora. A. R. Rahman’s work on Slumdog Millionaire, which earned him two Academy Awards in 2009, is one such example.

More recently, Diljit Dosanjh has shown the growing international reach of Hindi and Punjabi music. One of the opportunities lies in making music more accessible through different formats and contexts. Live experiences can introduce audiences to genres, artists and cultural traditions in ways that feel immediate and engaging, Birla added.

“We're in active conversation with artists, both established and independent, about how we can be genuinely useful to them beyond just selling their tickets. That's leading us to build a set of tools for artists—better audience insights, direct merchandise integration into the fan experience, and marketing surfaces that help artists reach the audiences most likely to love them,” said Meghana Bhogle, head of brand, experience and marketing at thumpN, an AI-native live entertainment discovery and ticketing platform.

Experts say what is particularly interesting is the growth of Indian music without being associated with films. Spotify’s recent India data shows that a significant share of royalties generated by Indian artists now comes from listeners outside India and many of the most-exported Indian songs come directly from artists rather than film soundtracks.

According to Sobti, this is an important change because it tells us that independent Indian artists can now build an audience internationally without needing the traditional film ecosystem as the bridge. Labels and artist companies are also beginning to look at artists more holistically.

The focus is moving from simply releasing a song to building the artist, understanding their audience, managing their catalogue and creating opportunities across music, live, brands and other forms of IP.

“The next evolution will be when international strategy becomes part of artist development from day one, rather than something that is considered after an artist has already become successful in India,” Sobti added.