MBW’s World Leaders is a regular series in which we turn the spotlight toward some of the most influential industry figures overseeing key international markets. In this feature, we speak to Jay Mehta, Managing Director, Warner Music South Asia. World Leaders is supported by PPL.
India is a big priority for Warner Music Group – and it’s not hard to see why.
The company’s CEO Robert Kyncl told analysts on WMG’s calendar Q3 earnings call the other week that India “will become an increasingly influential global force in the music business”.
He pointed out the gap between the size of the market’s GDP (the world’s fifth largest) versus the size of its recorded music market (the world’s 14th largest).
Kyncl argued that this gap will close, pointing to the opportunity in subscription music streaming. He noted that only 2% of the country’s 1.4 billion population currently subscribe to music streaming services, but that India’s total subscriber number has grown 40% over the past year.
India might not be the largest market globally by number of music subscribers, but it could be on course to become the largest by volume of streams.
Stats published by Luminate in January showed that India saw the biggest YoY increase in total annual on-demand music streams of any nation last year.
If annual streaming volume growth in the US slows in 2024, as many expect it will – but India manages to sustain its 2023 YoY streaming growth margin this year – India could become the world’s largest music streaming territory by volume in 2024.
WMG officially launched Warner Music India in March 2020, headed up by Jay Mehta.
He joined Warner Music Group following several years at Sony Music on April 1, 2020, right in the middle of the first COVID lockdown.
His remit expanded in April 2024 to include oversight of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka as Managing Director of the newly formed Warner Music South Asia.
“We had a very interesting start to Warner Music India,” Mehta tells us. “But what we’ve done in the last four years is significant.”
Warner Music has since inked several distribution and M&A deals in the market, looking to bolster its positioning amid projections of significant subscriber growth and streaming consumption domestically.
On the distribution front, WMG has struck deals with Bollywood specialist Tips Music and Punjabi music company Sky Digital India.
WMG’s M&A moves, meanwhile, include a strategic investment in JetSynthesys’…
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