Festive playlists power Amazon Music surge: Falguni fever, Bollywood's Bijuriya drive engagement

Which songs are trending currently? Gupta said it's Navratri time, so Falguni Pathak's songs are striking the right chord. When it comes to Bollywood, newly released songs like Ghafoor and Bijuriya are chartbusters.

He also noted that the sale on the ecommerce platform Amazon, like the Great Indian Festival, also drives engagement on Amazon Music.

"When more people come on Amazon.in to shop, they get exposed to more and more services that Amazon has to offer from music to video. Festivals are a good period in terms of subscriber growth," Gupta said.

He added that sales like the Great Indian Festival have a ripple effect on other services like Amazon Music. "More people subscribe to Prime and when they do that, they engage with different services or benefits within Prime. And the fact that music is quite relevant during festival periods spurs engagement."

The India head also noted that they still see 35-40 percent engagement for Hindi as a language with it being the number one language in terms of consumption. "Almost 85 percent of our customers listen to content in Hindi. Other languages like English, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu make up the top five for us but they don't always see a lot of activity. English sees high traction when Ed Sheeran drops a new album. But during Diwali that's not the case. We see consumption growing across all of these five languages. Festival time is a good period for us."

India turns up the volume

In addition to the festive period, Gupta is counting on the growth in the Indian market for audio streaming. Over the last few years, he has seen engagement consistently growing 20-25 percent annually on the platform.

He is also seeing more Indians paying for audio services. "There was a period of time when we had more than 10-12 players in the market and everybody was in a race to get free users. We took a bold and different approach that we wanted to be behind a paywall. In the last 2-3 years, there has been an industry-wide focus on improving monetization across the entire value chain. The good part is that  consumers are sort of responding to it. People have started to pay," he said.

India is predicted to be among the fastest markets in terms of growing subscribers and revenues, Gupta added. "In the last two years, the subscriber base has grown significantly and that's the validation of what the long term belief in India is. We see that trend continuing over the next 5-15 years, and, hopefully, we can ride that wave."

He noted that, in India, the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for music services range between $99 and $120 a month. Gupta pointed out Spotify's recent price, increase saying that there will be a bit of a wait-and-watch period to see how consumers respond and then everybody will follow suit.

Spotify increased its Premium prices in India in August 2025 for the first time since 2019.

Gupta sees many tailwinds in India for the audio-streaming market. "We have more than 700 million smartphones, mobile penetration, data penetration. People are accustomed to streaming. It's just that the paying part was missing, which again we started to see in the last couple of years. So, we feel very confident where we are. If you compare India with more developed markets like the US and the UK, we are way behind in terms of the percentage of people who pay for music. But I am confident that in the next 5-10 years, we should be able to catch up significantly."

On the other hand, the Ernst & Young-FICCI 2025 media and entertainment report noted that the Indian music segment declined by 2 percent to reach Rs 5,300 crorein 2024 due to the shutdown of some streaming platforms, reduced streaming rates and a push to convert free consumers to paid consumers on digital platforms.

Podcast preference

While there are challenges in India, there is another segment that is making Gupta confident--- podcasts that contribute 15 percent to the total engagement on the platform.

"Podcast consumption has grown significantly over the last 3-4 years. The engagement has gone up by at least 22 percent consistently year on year," Gupta said.

With more than 15 million podcast episodes, Amazon Music is actively working on doing different kinds of partnerships. "We have some early release partnerships with pretty popular podcasters like Cyrus Broacha."

Along with podcasts, other forms of consumption on the platform have been on the rise, Gupta said. "There are in-app videos, which are like the Walk-in, where you go into the wardrobe of your favourite artist. Then there is the artist diary, which is about the backstory of an artist. Around last year, we launched an IP called Before You Go On, which was to actually get inside the minds of artists before they go on a stage for a concert. These IPs have also done well for us," he said.