In an endeavour to offer quality content, while recognizing the most-loved music across local languages, JioSaavn, one of the country’s largest music and audio streaming services, recently rolled out the ‘We Are India’ campaign. In the first phase of the campaign, the platform curated playlists featuring mainstream and film, non-film, and independent music and podcasts across languages.

The data mapped by JioSaavn between November 2019 and July 2020 revealed noteworthy streaming trends in regional language music. According to the platform, Hindi was identified as the most-streamed language by music lovers, contributing to 60% of the overall streams. JioSaavn found that Patna, Lucknow and Delhi-NCR are the top three cities with the highest number of Hindi music lovers.

The music streaming activity in Hindi continues to be dominated by artists like Arijit Singh, Neha Kakkar and Alka Yagnik. By emphasising on the music of contemporary artists, JioSaavn endeavours to connect with Indian music lovers who are keen to rediscover their heritage and culture. While the data reveals that Bollywood songs are still the most frequently streamed followed closely by Indie Pop, it is the music back from the 90s era that has been immensely popular among the music lovers.

Hits like Shayad (112 Mn+ streams), Bheegi Bheegi (47 Mn+ streams) and Garmi (105 Mn+ streams) emerged as the most-streamed songs in Hindi. Meri Aashiqui (by Jubin Nautiyal with 64 Mn+ streams), Tum Hi Aana (From Marjaavaan with 247 Mn + streams) and Genda Phool (by Badshah with 89 Mn+ streams) were the Top 3 JioTunes according to data from JioSaavn.

That said, Weekly Top 15 (Hindi), Top JioTunes – Hindi and Weekly Jukebox – Bollywood Romantic Hindi were ranked among the top three playlists attracting maximum streams followed by All Arijit, Best of 2019: Romance – Hindi. Apart from these, Kabir Singh emerged as the first Bollywood album to hit 1 Billion streams. The album has been in the top three searched items every month since June 2019.

The platform also experienced a shift in the audio content consumption patterns of its users during the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown beginning in March. Hindi podcasts streams registered a 45% increase during the lockdown period, highlighting its growing popularity among Indian masses. ‘Millennial Kavi’, ‘Bhai Ke Raapchik Reviews’, ‘Tumne Kisi se Kabhi Pyaar Kiya hai?’, ‘Kahaani Express with Neelesh Misra’ and ‘Far From Forgotten’ were the most popular podcasts that took the lead on the back of their immersive content and engaging elements.

Apart from Hindi, JioSaavn discovered significant streaming trends in other regional language music as well. The platform identified Punjabi as the second most-streamed regional language with artists like Sidhu Moose Wala, B.Praak, Jaani, Guru Randhawa and Harrdy Sandhu making it to the top. Telugu being the 3rd most-streamed regional language had SP Balasubramanyam, Sid Sriram, Anurag Kulkarni and KS Chithra as top streamed artists. Meanwhile, Kannada, which was identified among the top five most-streamed regional languages too had SP Balasubrahmanyam along with Vijay Prakash and Sonu Nigam as the dominant artists.

To further understand regional music streaming patterns in the country, JioSaavn generated data about some additional regional languages between the period of January 1 and August 31, 2020. From the eastern side of the country, Odia witnessed a close to 50% increase in streams on the platform whereas Bengali music contributed to over 45% of the total streams on the platform. Artists like Arijit Singh, Shreya Ghoshal and Anupan Roy, Kumar Sanu, Asha Bhosle, Bappi Lahiri were positioned in the list of most-streamed artists.

From the West, the Gujarati language observed a 28% increase in music streams where Rakesh Barot, Jignesh Kaviraj and Vijay Suvada took the lead as most-streamed artists. Meanwhile, from down south, Anirudh Ravichander, Sid Sriram and AR Rahman made it to the most-streamed list of Tamil artists.

While music comes with no language barrier, it has been observed in the recent past that an increasing number of music lovers are opening up to consuming content in their native language for emotional relatability. This urged JioSaavn to celebrate regional excellence through ‘We Are India’ and make quality content accessible to new-age listeners from across the country.

Listen now to the We Are India – Hindi playlist.