Universal Music adopts China playbook to drive paid music streaming in India

Universal Music Group (UMG) is adopting the strategy it used to transform China's music market in an effort to accelerate paid music streaming in India, introducing a 72-hour premium release window for new music from the end of August as it looks to improve monetisation in one of the world's largest ad-supported streaming markets.

Under the new policy, new releases from UMG's major domestic and international artists will be available exclusively to paid subscribers for the first 72 hours before becoming available on ad-supported services. The window will apply across global and domestic music streaming platforms operating in India.

"Beginning at the end of August, UMG's new releases from major domestic and international artists will be launched exclusively to paid streaming subscribers for their first 72 hours on both global and regional streaming services. After that, they will become available on ad-supported services too," UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said during the company's second-quarter earnings call.


Read More: Zee Music Company expands South India footprint with multilingual music rights acquisitions

"Fans will still have access to the music they love, and artists will see the benefit of improved compensation," he added.

Grainge said the company was applying lessons from China, where UMG worked with major digital streaming platforms beginning in 2019 to place domestic and international music behind a paywall.

"Many skeptics predicted it would have a negative impact, and that we shouldn't do it, and that it would affect music consumption and the market development. Exactly the opposite happened," he said.

According to Grainge, China overtook Germany by 2025 to become the world's fourth-largest recorded music market. He said the market was driven by premium subscriptions and superfan experiences, with revenue growing more than 20% year on year.

Read More: Rusk Media ropes in multiple brands for Tamil indie music show

Explaining the India strategy, UMG Chief Digital Officer Michael Nash said the company sees India as one of the music industry's biggest growth opportunities but believes the market remains under-monetised despite massive streaming volumes.

"India should certainly rank higher than the number 15 global music market. It's one of the largest growth opportunities in the world, and we've got to accelerate market development," Nash said.

He said India is "one of the largest markets in the world for ad-funded streaming", generating around one trillion streams in 2025, but has "very, very low paid conversion rates."

"We're talking about industry estimates, 7% to 10% of the total individual streaming users are paid users," Nash said.

Providing further details of the rollout, Nash said: "Beginning in the last week in August, we're going to initiate this short 72-hour premium window for all of our top releases, both domestic and international. During this first 72 hours of release, these tracks are only going to be available in premium tiers, and that's across all platforms in India, the global DSPs, as well as the domestic players."

Nash cited Jio's decision to move Indian Premier League cricket behind a paywall as an example of premium content driving paid subscriptions.

"Recently the Indian premium cricket league, all their matches were moved by Jio behind the paywall, and that was one of the major elements that drove Jio to obtain more than 200 million subscribers in that market. That's a great example that points directionally to the opportunity to move premium content behind a paywall and work to engineer market development," he said.

Separately, Devraj Sanyal, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music India & South Asia, described India as being at "an inflection point."

"We have successfully helped develop the market to its current position. But we believe there is more value to be unlocked for artists and songwriters whose creativity powers the music ecosystem," Sanyal said in a LinkedIn post.

He said the initiative is aimed at "strengthening the value of music and building a more sustainable creative community."