I-Pop: Why India's Music Industry Is Hoping It Becomes The Next Big Buzzword

By Amit Gurbaxani for Drip by Kulfi Collective.

It’s taken a few years but the Indian music industry seems to have finally come to a consensus about how to bucket its burgeoning commercial pop music scene. They’ve decided to call it ‘I-Pop’, a more suitable descriptor than ‘non-film’, which has been in use for about a decade but is problematic as it suggests all the country’s music is relative to that coming out of its movie business.

Though the majority of the songs being streamed in our country are hits from Bollywood and other regional-language films, their share of overall consumption has steadily declined from over 90% on some platforms five years ago to approximately 50 per cent today on services such as Spotify.

A quick glance at Spotify’s charts provides the evidence. Singer/songwriter Anuv Jain is at No.1 with “Jo Tum Mere Ho”, the same position he was at the start of the year with its predecessor “Husn”. I-Pop acts AP Dhillon and King claimed the top tracks of 2022 and 2023 on the DSP, with their respective singles “Excuses” and “Maan Meri Jaan”. All this action has prompted the streamer to take on the role of chief proponent of I-Pop.

“Why are we doing this? Because we’re seeing the consumption on the platform,” says Padmanabhan ‘Paddy’ NS, the head of artist and label partnerships at Spotify India. “When we view the data about what’s being picked and how, we know we need to fuel a certain form of music.”

What exactly is I-Pop?

While I-Pop artists span a range of languages and genres, a unifying factor is that their music has mass appeal. I-Pop, says Spotify, is “not a sound, but a movement”. How exactly one determines what falls under it, is something they too are figuring out. “Right now, I-Pop is quite fluid,” says Paddy. “It’s primarily artist-driven, mainstream pop music heard across various states.”?

Aayushman Sinha , the founder of music-centric entertainment and management company REPRESENT whose roster includes Jain, believes I-Pop’s scope is even wider. “It’s anything that’s relevant to the culture at that given point, if there’s a sense of Indianness to it in any way possible - it could be an amazing alternative jazz band.” He believes it’s going to take time for its precise meaning to evolve because “I-Pop is probably a concept that has come out of a marketing discussion, it’s not something that any science or any rulebook has given us”.

The best thing about it, says Sinha, is that it brings together a number of diverse segments. “For Indian artists, take an Anuv, MC Stan, or an upcoming singer/songwriter like Kamakshi Khanna, so far they were all really confused about where they fit in,” Sinha says. “There was too much fragmentation. I feel I-Pop as a whole puts that together.”?

For Spotify, one of the objectives behind backing I-Pop is to rectify the imbalance between the amount of promotion a film song is given compared to a pop track. “When a film is being released, the music is promoted as part of that and gets a huge push,” says Dhruvank Vaidya , the head of music and podcasts at Spotify India. “Artist-driven music doesn’t have the same kind of marketing muscle, which is why we thought of galvanising it around the movement we’ve termed I-Pop.”

Who is I-Pop?

Among the playlists on Spotify’s I-Pop hub are the flagship I-Pop Icons; I-Pop Superhits for the top streamed tunes by I-Pop acts; the mood-based I-Pop Chills; and I-Pop Nostalgia, which curates classics from its early 1990s and early 2000s Indi-pop avatar.. There are also playlists for the three unofficial ‘genres’ of Indian music - I-Pop Mohabbat for ‘happy love’,? I-Pop Sad Feels for ‘sad love’, and? I-PopParty for dance tracks.?

The difference between an I-Pop musician and an I-Pop ‘icon’ is the level of fandom they boast. “When you’re a fan, you consume the music not because it’s a hit but because it’s music from that artist you like,” says Paddy. “Everything they put out is something you want to listen to. The skew of artist-driven music within the Punjabi audience is very high, which is why you see Punjabi artists releasing albums with 18 to 20 songs. They don’t care about which song is going to be a hit. You see the same thing in hip-hop.”

Trawling through the playlists, there’s a lot of Punjabi pop and hip-hop from the likes of Badshah, Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla but conspicuous by its absence is the song some might say is the biggest I-Pop track in recent times, “Big Dawgs” by Hanumankind and Kalmi, which reached the upper regions of charts across the world. The reason for this, says Spotify, is that it comes down to how an act wants themselves to be perceived, given that the term ‘pop’ comes with its own baggage.

“We don’t want to lose the focus of the artist and the direction in which they’re trying to go,” says Paddy about why you won’t find “Big Dawgs” in an I-Pop playlist. “We would rather position Hanumankind as a global hip-hop star than as an I-Pop star.” In contrast, a lot of Punjabi artists who both sing and rap on their records want to be known as “pop stars”, adds Paddy. “We’ve had these discussions with them as well.”

Sinha differs with this approach. “I don’t think it’s an artist’s choice to decide whether they’re called an I-Pop artist or not,” he says. “It’s a consumer expression more than anything else. We’re calling it a cultural phenomenon and you can’t decide which culture you fall under or how the audience perceives you. As a consumer, I see Hanumankind as a champion of? I-Pop, as one of its strongest flag bearers.”

Is I-Pop the K-Pop of India?

While Spotify says that exporting Indian music abroad is not the prime objective behind the I-Pop campaign, the similarity of the term and comparisons with K-Pop are inevitable. “Comparing it to the breakout of Latin music or Korean music, it’s very important to visualise and present it as the pop culture offering of our country,” says Sinha. “We should make it the most solid, beautiful export we can possibly put together.”

That sentiment is shared by Jay Mehta , the managing director of the Warner Music Group in India and South Asia. “If at all any country’s sound has to go global, it needs to have an identity,” he says. “If we don’t put a big umbrella brand over it, it might just get lost.”

For an artist like King, the idea of taking India to the globe is an integral part of the I-Pop movement. “Spotify has taken a very good step in letting the world know that this is our sound,” he says. As an act who releases songs that can be categorised as both pop, like the melodic ballad “Maan Meri Jaan”, and as more sharp-edged rap, like the anthemic stomper “Crown”, King feels there’s a lot of room for flexibility when it comes to classifying music as I-Pop. “Until a song blows up, you can call it indie or anything, but when it does, it can be called commercial,” he says. “Anything can boom tomorrow even if it’s weird or different and that too can be classified I-Pop if it’s by an Indian artist. So if ‘Crown’ gets 100 million plays, it will fall into the I-Pop category because it’s popular.”

Notably, Spotify has included in its I-Pop hub acts who don’t quite boast the longevity of the icons their songs sit aside. Those tracks have earned their spot through the sheer number of plays they’ve generated. “For songs that are possibly one-hit-wonders, the idea is to encourage the artists [behind them] by putting them in an I-Pop playlist and telling them, ‘It’s going mainstream, what are you going to do now? What’s the next step you’re going to take?’”, says Paddy.

Spotify has chosen to exclude English-language Indian music from I-Pop, though tunes sung partially in English, such as Tesher’s “Jalebi Baby”, which includes a fair bit of Punjabi, can make the cut. However, this could change if, say, a bilingual artist like Prateek Kuhad lands a smash that becomes too big to ignore. “It will take time for the definitions to settle,” says Vaidya.

Though labels have started to adopt 'I-Pop' and drop 'non-film' in their communications about releases, for the name to be widely embraced, other DSPs who might feel it’s too closely associated with Spotify need to also begin using it while naming their playlists. “We don’t want to own I-Pop as a term,” says Paddy.?

Every single streaming service operating in India highlights and has dedicated playlists for what Spotify has now christened I-Pop. On Apple Music, these include those for ‘Hindi Pop’, ‘Indian Independent’, hip-hop and Punjabi music, the last of which is a “priority genre” for the platform. On JioSaavn and Amazon Prime Music, they’re variously titled ‘Indipop’, ‘Indie’ or simply ‘Pop’. YouTube appears to be the only platform that has a playlist for ‘I-Pop Hits’ along with those for ‘Indie’ and ‘Indian Pop’, though their artists and songs overlap. ?

Sinha feels that if Spotify’s competitors prove resistant to the term, then the media and musicians themselves might compel them to accept it. “The second there’s going to be more international press and more advertising interest, this will change. And when an artist starts staking the claim of being the biggest I-Pop artist in the country, the [other] DSPs will start following suit.”

I-Pop>Indi-pop?

The reason why I-Pop will outlast Indi-pop, industry insiders say, is because the latter was very much a product of music television with channels like MTV and Channel [V] being the main medium through which the songs were popularised. When those stations pivoted to playing mostly Bollywood music towards the end of the 1990s, it heralded the decline of the era, and the gradual co-option of its exponents by Bollywood who turned pop stars into playback singers.?

“Indi-pop was triggered by the birth of MTV in India,” says Paddy. “MTV started out as an artist-first platform that wanted to promote Indian pop. Film music producers and labels found out that it was a great place to showcase their music. When they came into the picture, these artists started gravitating towards films and gaining more fame and more money.”

The key change that has taken place between then and now is the democratisation of music distribution and promotion courtesy of streaming services, social media and short format video apps, which has enabled artists to be less dependent on the gatekeepers of the past.

Moreover, in the 1990s, India did not have the touring circuit that exists currently for them to capitalise on their fandom and earn much more from ticket sales than they do from streams. This is because enough listeners are fans of the artist rather than just their hits. “The love for the personality has outgrown the love for just a song, which is why this is going to be a lot more sustainable for a lot of artists,” says Sinha. “Earlier, there wasn’t much opportunity to connect with talent that you really resonate with.” There are multiple examples of Indian acts who can stage national and international tours. “[In the Indi-pop era,] we never heard of artists selling out gigs across the country the way Diljit has done,” says Mehta.

Sweta Ojha, co-founder of Bluprint.inc, the talent management company to which King is signed, adds that another differentiator is that “in the 1990s, when the pop phenomenon happened, it was great but it was also very label-driven”. She says, “They were deciding what the videos were going to look like. King decides what his video is going to look like, and how we want to market it is completely in our hands. Even if Karan [Aujla] does a ‘Tauba Tauba’ for a Bollywood movie [like Bad Newz], he will still have the independence to release ten singles.”

According to Paddy, the fact that we’re now in control of what we hear is a crucial factor. “It’s no longer what you see is what you get,” he says. “Before, everything was: we will tell you what you have to listen to, the ‘we’ being the industry and the people with the most money, which would probably be film [producers]. Streaming platforms present you things you want to listen to. The audience is going to decide the longevity of I-Pop, not the industry.”

The audience, however, isn’t quite aware of I-Pop as a term yet. For instance, 23-year-old graphic designer Tanisha Mehta, who counts herself among the biggest fans of singer/songwriters Kuhad and Anuv Jain and also loves bands like Peter Cat Recording Co., The Yellow Diary and When Chai Met Toast, hadn’t heard of ‘I-Pop’ but says she does “know indie pop”. Mehta, who uses YouTube Music, feels Kuhad is closer to “indie” and Jain to “pop”. The former are differentiated from the latter because “their music is not mainstream but they’re still famous,” she says. “Most of my friends agree.”

Indeed, ‘indie’ or ‘independent’ are words that have frequently been misused by Indian labels as a descriptor for all music not from a soundtrack, whereas the term originally signified music that was not on a label or at least that which was not released by a major. Relatively, ‘non-film’ was a better, or less worse, alternative. ‘I-Pop’ may not be perfect or even original - Indonesian pop is also referred to as I-Pop - but it’s perhaps the best way to bracket a variety of music.?

What will it take for I-Pop to pop?

It will take time for the term to permeate the masses - and perhaps, Gen Alpha kids will call themselves I-Pop fans when they become teenagers. When a teen is asked what kind of music they listen to, it’s easier to imagine them replying “I like I-Pop” than saying “I love ‘non-film music”.’ What’s clear though is that no matter which name sticks, unlike 1990s Indi-pop, the artists are here to stay.

Yet, unlike most Korean Pop, which can instantly be recognised as K-Pop, the various languages and styles that fall under I-Pop make it that much more unwieldy to group together under a single identity? Its success then will rely on how far India’s music industry is able to make it as strong a force as film music. There might be little overlap in the music of Diljit Dosanjh and Prateek Kuhad, apart from their ability to generate millions of streams and sell thousands of concert tickets.

For I-Pop to thrive, the next generation of its stars needs more than just dedicated playlists and a fluke viral hit. They need infrastructure that allows them to gradually build a live audience while simultaneously honing their craft. They need the government to recognise that Indian popular music has for long expanded beyond its movie industry and that independent musicians are entrepreneurs by another name. They need labels to offer fair deals that treat artists as humans and not products like soundtracks. The artists themselves need to rely less on film stars to help market their songs.

Until it plunged into a prolonged creative crisis sometime during the last decade, one of Bollywood’s canniest aspects was its ability was co-opt new and exciting musical forms, from jazz in the 1950s, rock n’ roll in the ’60s, disco in the ’80s to our very own Indi-pop in the ’90s. Today, it regurgitates rather than reimagines, and that gives I-Pop an edge to be our country’s new source of its most forward-thinking music. We’ll revisit the growth of I-Pop in a few months to see how far, as Spotify says, it has turned into a movement but for now, it’s only when industry stakeholders – notorious for playing it safe – start investing in innovation and experimentation that I-Pop will sustain the momentum it has gained over the last five years.