Jun 28, 2026 7:16pm IST
Rishabh Gupta on Amazon Music India’s ‘Dhurandhar’ Album Launch, Brand Visibility And What’s Ahead For The Streaming Service (EXCLUSIVE)
When Amazon Music arrived in India in 2018, it had a year’s head start over Spotify. And yet, for a number of reasons, the perception has remained that Spotify dominates conversations. While Amazon Music partnered with Saregama Music for the record-breaking “Dhurandhar” album, it was a coup of sorts. The film’s music was launched at a flashy event in Mumbai with the singers, musicians and the film’s cast all in attendance. Even before the film’s release, the album had found a strong following. The reactions to the launch were positive but ran its course fairly quickly, even though the film’s media visibility was great.
Retorting that the perception is myopic, Rishabh Gupta, Head - Amazon Music India, shoots back when asked if it got the brand better visibility, saying, “The ‘Dhurandhar’ music launch was attended by 3,000 fans. It was one of the most talked about album launches of the year across the industry and helped us drive brand awareness in a very big way. In fact, the songs for the album still feature in our ‘50 Most Played’ charts even today.”
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He put down the event’s success to the “ensemble of artists like Hanumankind (real name: Sooraj Cherukat), Diljit Dosanjh, Arijit Singh, Madhubanti Bagchi and Jasmine Sandlas, brought together by the brilliant Shashwat Sachdev” and identifying it as “a recipe for success,” decided to partner with the studio and label ”to bring in this album as a larger-than-life on-ground experience.”
Gupta says, “The cherry on top was the presence of Ranveer Singh at the event alongside Hanumankind, who performed for a movie album, probably for the first time ever. And honestly, it didn't stop there. We featured Madhubanti Bagchi as part of our Women In Music campaign in March because we wanted to dig deeper into the story of how ‘Ramba Ho’ came to life.“
He further shares, “2025 wasn’t just about ‘Dhurandhar,’ we also did a stage event for ‘Param Sundari’ and for Dhanush and Kriti Sanon’s ‘Tere Ishk Mein’ After ‘Dhurandhar,’ we also did an on-ground music album launch for ‘Border 2,’ at the Naval base in Karwar (the INS Kadamba), keeping the nostalgic music sentiment and flavour of the film in mind.”
Going forward, he adds, “partnerships are going to be a part of our ongoing strategy and we hope to make these events bigger and larger, and bring more of our customers to these events.”
More recently, Amazon Music India has unbundled itself from the Prime subscription tier it was launched with. Earlier this month, the audio streaming service provider announced that it was unbundling itself from Prime and that three subscription tiers would exist moving forward: Amazon Music Unlimited (full-featured, premium; 6 months free, then ₹99 for existing Prime subscribers, ₹119 for non-Prime subscribers), Amazon Music for Prime (for existing subs; limited ads, no offline download, included with Prime) and Amazon Music Free (Access to full catalog but ad-supported with limited features, available without Prime membership), which launches July 2.
Shares Rishi Mirchandani, VP Licensing and Strategy - Amazon Music, “In addition to the launch of the three tiers, we've two businesses that we've built that are related to music, one of which is our livestreaming business. We livestream music festivals, artist performances and some programmatic series that we distribute on Prime Video, on Twitch and within the Amazon Music app. We have also built a merch business, where we manage the artist merchandise and physical music that you can buy on the retail store. We have also started doing direct artists partnerships, where we will partner with them (artists) in manufacturing their tour merch or online capsules. Our goal is to give customers the ability to not only stream music, but also to interact with their favorite artists, whether it's through a livestream or through buying merch or physical music.”
Mirchandani adds that the livestreaming capability is available in India. “We livestreamed the Primavera Sound music festival from Barcelona, which customers in India were able to consume through the app."
Rishabh Gupta believes that the market has changed considerably over the past few years. While reflecting on brand visibility, he notes, “There were more than 10 streaming platforms less than three years back. Now we're down to almost five. India is just very early on that S-curve and it's just on that hockey stick growth path. I think the next five years is not necessarily about obsessing over competition, but I think it'll be enough for everybody to take a slice of that. I think, collectively, it's everybody's responsibility for the Indian music industry to do well. I don't think that that's something that we obsess over. I think India is going to see massive growth over the next 5 to 10 years. There'll be something for everybody.”
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