Indian Music Industry


The Indian Music Industry is a trust that represents the recording industry distributors in India. It was founded on February 28, 1936 as Indian Phonographic Industry . It is the 2nd oldest music industry organization in the world that was involved in protecting copyrights of music producers and supporting growth of music entertainment industry. In 1994, it was renamed as Indian Music Industry and represented India at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. It is also registered with the West Bengal Societies Registration Act. All major music labels in India are part of this association. Record companies like Saregama India Ltd., Universal Music, Tips Industries Limited, Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records, Magnasound, Times Music and several other prominent national and regional labels are part of the IMI. The IMI represents over 75% of all legal music sales in India.
IMI has its registered office in Kolkata and Administrative office in Mumbai. It also has offices in New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and other major Indian cities working on the protection of rights of music producers and preventing music piracy. It has also been instrumental in launching the IMMIES music awards in collaboration with MTV.
The Indian music industry is largely dominated by Indian film soundtracks, which account for nearly 80% of the country's music revenue, followed by Indi-pop. As of 2014, the largest Indian music record label is T-Series with up to 35% share of the Indian market, followed by Sony Music India with up to 25% share, and then Zee Music. As of 2017, 216million Indians use music streaming services such as YouTube, Hungama, Gaana and Saavn. T-Series has the world's most-subscribed and most-viewed YouTube channel.

History

The industry was dominated by cassette tapes in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1990, India had annual cassette sales of 180million units, including both legitimate and pirate sales. This made it the world's second largest cassette market, after the United States. By 1998, the industry had annual earnings of .
In the early 2000s, 49million cassettes were sold every month. Later in the 2000s, the industry transitioned to online streaming, bypassing CD and digital downloads.

Criteria of certification levels

The Indian Music Industry has constituted different, prestigious awards to encourage and promote music. The approved scheme of gold/platinum disc standards effective for sound recordings of member companies released in one calendar year is as below:
Indian Music Industry does not maintain official music charts. Since 2010, newspaper The Times of India and radio channel Radio Mirchi, both owned by the Times Group, have maintained charts of various songs by category. For the album charts the industry considers the sales according to iTunes. For individual songs, there are various other charts such as provided by Saavn and Nokia MixRadio

Major Indian charts

Certification levels

India has separate scales for music recording certifications. Certifications are usually based on sales, like some other Asian countries. Like many other Asian countries, domestic repertoire accounts for the majority of the Indian music market. Like many other countries, sales requirements of music recording in India reduced due to music piracy, declining sales, and the rise of online streaming.

Current

The following are the current certification levels, as of 2019.
Single and album units are measured in terms of Track Equivalent and Album Equivalent units, respectively, which are equivalent to the following media units.
Media unitTrack Equivalent Album Equivalent
Digital track download110
Digital album download1
Physical album sale1
CRBT (30 days220
Track streams1001,000
Video streams3003,000

Previous

Prior to the inclusion of music streaming in IMI certifications, the following certification levels were in use between 2007 and 2013.
Release typeGoldPlatinum
Hindi Films200,000400,000
Regional Films50,000100,000
Regional Basic25,00050,000
National Basic50,000100,000
Classical/Non-Classical15,00030,000
International4,0006,000

The following certification levels were in use between 2000 and 2007.
Release typeGoldPlatinum
Hindi Films500,0001,000,000
Regional Films100,000200,000
Regional Basic60,000120,000
National Basic100,000200,000
Classical/Semi-Classical20,00040,000
International (200610,00020,000
International (200020,00040,000

The following certification levels were in use up until 2000.
Release typeGoldPlatinum
Hindi films500,0001,000,000
Indi-pop120,000200,000
Foreign30,00060,000

Best-selling albums

Top ten

By decade