'Heeramandi' to 'Chamkila': Music in streaming series hits the right note

OTT shows, film scores bring in a new sliver of revenues and some questions

This report has been updated

Indians first saw streaming video on YouTube in 2008. Disney+ Hotstar arrived in 2015. However, streaming shows and films truly took off only after the entry of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in 2016. From almost nothing, the market has grown to Rs 31,000 crore in advertising and pay revenue by 2023. Currently, over 524 million Indians watch streaming video, according to Comscore data. This growth is creating several opportunities and raising some challenging questions for other parts of the entertainment ecosystem.

For instance, how should the music within a streaming show or film be treated?
 

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi —The Diamond Bazaar, an eight-episode series about courtesans in pre-partition India, landed on Netflix in May this year. It hit the top 10 in 43 countries, including the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. Its music, however, posed a challenge.
 

Most labels were hesitant to pay the (reportedly steep) asking price for its classically inclined nine songs. It was, after all, a streaming show and not the full-length theatrical extravaganzas Bhansali is known for, says the head of one music company. “There is a belief that series music doesn’t work,” adds Prerna Singh, chief executive officer (CEO), Bhansali Productions. That is when Bhansali, who had also composed the music, went ahead and launched his own label.
 

By September, Heeramandi’s songs had been streamed (listened to) over 200 million times, says Singh.
 

Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila, a Netflix film, features the original songs that Chamkila — known as the Elvis of Punjab — wrote, composed, and sang before being assassinated in 1988 at the age of 27. Many of these songs are owned by Saregama. There are also six (superb) new songs written by Irshad Kamil and set to music by A R Rahman. Saregama came in as co-producer and therefore holds the rights to these songs as well.
 

“Ownership of IP (intellectual property) for shows and music on Netflix varies based on the content strategy for each title. For instance, with Qala, we owned the music but collaborated with Sony (Music) for distribution to leverage the label’s reach, while for Mismatched or Class, we retained complete ownership, managing everything from release to revenue collection,” says Monika Shergill, vice president, content, Netflix.
 

Roughly 70 per cent of all music heard and sold in Indiacomes from films —songs are integral to our storytelling. 
 

The Indian entertainment ecosystem is geared to handle this new beast. This is not true for developed markets. Simon Dyson, senior principal analyst, music and digital audio at UK-based Omdia, says he never heard of theme music for films becoming a big success, except perhaps for James Bond.
 

“The use of songs on TV (meaning on the small screen) has become big with OTT,” he says. He points to British singer Kate Bush, now 66. Her 1985 hit Running up that Hill gained new life when Netflix used it in an episode of the fourth season of its global chart-topper Stranger Things. That is the opportunity part.
 

“Very often, when you see or hear a track on a popular TV show or film, the streams go up,” says Dyson. The 16 numbers for SonyLIV’s hit show Scam 1992 achieved 1.37 million streams on Spotify alone, mostly for its pulsating theme song. Amazon Prime Video’s Four More Shots Please featured youth sensation Darshan Raval, whose song for the show garnered 34 million streams to date.
 

Except for Heermandi, across this piece, streams on Spotify have been used as an indicative metric here since there is no Billboard-style ranking across music apps.
 

Within two weeks of Squid Game’s debut on Netflix in 2021, Spotify listeners had created more than 22,500 unique themed playlists to keep the experience of the show going. This led to the creation of the Netflix Hub on Spotify, now available in 17 countries, including the US, Germany, and India. In April 2022, Spotify also launched a personalised playlist called Web Series Hits.
 

There’s also the exposure to global markets and talent that over-the-top (OTT) platforms bring. Netflix organises workshops and training programmes to upskill talent. “In 2022, we launched a music supervision workshop with Berklee College of Music, and last year collaborated with Academy Award-winning music editor John Warhurst. This year, we’re expanding to Chennai with our first South India music workshop,” says Shergill.
 

“Though the frequency of music from OTT is rising, it is not yet comparable to films in scale,” says Vasundhara Mudgil, head of PR and communications, Spotify India

. “If a hit song is associated with a top film, it could achieve between 200-500 million streams and, over time, a billion streams,” says Mandar Thakur, CEO, Times Music. 
 

The songs for both seasons of Mismatched, one of the bigger musical hits on OTT, streamed between 70-133 million times on Spotify alone. On the other hand, a small movie like Laapata Ladies, now India’s entry to the Oscars, achieved over 151 million streams.
 

Most analysts believe this opportunity could bring in 5-10 per cent of the Indian music industry’s Rs 2,400 crore revenue in the future. “It is a 5 per cent that could be the difference between growth and de-growth,” says Dyson.