The music industry has been a roller coaster ride for artists in India ever since its feeble inception under the shadow of Bollywood during the 70’s. In current times, the situation still remains dire for struggling musicians who seek to make an impression beyond the realm of commercial film making.
India might be hosting big-ticket festivals like Lollapalooza and Rolling Loud over the last couple of years, but all of it feels like a band-aid slapped over a much deeper wound. The reality of trying to survive as a full-time independent musician in this country hasn’t changed much.
Let’s face it. Unless you’re making big bucks from corporate gigs or spending your weekends playing cover sets, making a living through original music is incredibly difficult. Yet thousands of artists still choose this path. Maybe chasing your dream feels less painful than giving it up altogether.
But you win some and you lose some, I guess.
When the late Chandramouli Biswas, former bassist of Bangla rock legends Fossils, passed away, it re-sparked conversations about whether chasing music is worth the emotional and financial toll. Over time, those questions have only gotten louder.
The gigging scene in India is unpredictable. A good month can make you believe things are finally falling into place. Then comes a stretch where your calendar is empty and suddenly you’re questioning everything. The damage isn’t always to your identity as a musician. It’s often your bank account that takes the hardest hit.
When money gets tight, you’ll take whatever comes your way. Sometimes that means relying entirely on ticket sales or accepting gigs that barely cover your travel. “Live gigs are hard to come by and pay peanuts, streaming revenue is negligible. The government provides little to no grants or sponsorship opportunities,” says Aditya Krishnan, a full-time musician and music teacher from Bengaluru. Aditya is associated with Bangalore-based metalcore band Among The Signs.
The dream often comes with a day job
Contrary to what social media might suggest, most independent musicians aren’t getting to play live on stage every week, living entirely off their night’s earnings. You need money to make music, but making music rarely gives you enough money to keep making it (for artists mostly touring locally).
So what do you do? You diversify your gigs.
Aditya teaches music at a private international school in Bangalore. Kolkata guitarist Aritro works in sales and client relations for an Australian startup while playing guitar and backing vocals for his band Punch.
Singer-songwriter Sarbik Guha has built his professional life around education, development work and now pursuing academic research in Ireland.
Then there’s Dotty, a Kolkata rapper making punk rap music, who works in Amazon operations and also takes up freelance writing gigs. “Basically, one side of me works for the system, while the other side makes music that sounds like it wants to burn the system down,” Dotty says.
It might be one of the most accurate descriptions of the modern independent musician’s life.
For Aritro, music has always been a professional pursuit since his college days. Yet his full-time job remains what allows him to continue doing it. Shreya, another Kolkata freshman, works in HR at an MNC. She has been learning guitar for around six years and bass for about a year and a half, but music currently contributes nothing to her livelihood.
In fact, it has cost her money!
“I make negative money from music since I have paid way more for rehearsals, travel and adjacent expenses,” Shreya jokes. But underneath it lies a sad truth. That’s the truth for most artists trying to make a name for themselves in the Indian music scene.
The financial burden of being a musician begins long before there is any income.
You have to buy instruments, strings, pedals and amplifiers, pay for rehearsal spaces, transportation, recording, all the while investing in lessons and managing rent and groceries. Also come the less obvious expenses, like artwork, distribution, promotion and additional touring expenditures.
For someone with a stable corporate salary, these expenses can be absorbed into a monthly budget. For someone attempting to live exclusively from music, they can become a serious barrier.
Aritro’s experience shows that earning money from music, although possible, often depends on what kind of music you’re willing to play.
He has largely played commercial gigs for a Bollywood-loving pub audience. His four-member band could earn around INR 20K per show, with roughly one show every week. But those were commercial gigs that most people eat up. Original music was not necessarily the product being sold.
“Overall, if I didn’t have a full-time job, I would not be able to survive just on my earnings as a musician,” he says.
When the gig calendar decides your bank balance
The number of gigs an independent artist gets can also vary wildly depending on the genre, city, season and their willingness to play commercial music.
Aditya, living in a high-income city like Bangalore averages around three shows a month, although he describes the number as unstable. Whereas Dotty generally plays one or two gigs a month in Kolkata, sometimes reaching four during peak periods. This frequency, in comparison to a label-led touring schedule of a commercially backed pop icon with dedicated A&Rs, is a drop in the bucket.
But even that number is heavily seasonal. October to December is the “good half.” Durga Puja leads into Diwali and then Christmas, Christmas into New Year, and the demand for live entertainment progressively increases.
Then comes March. The start of the dry months.
For Aritro and his band, March to July can be one of the driest periods of the year because they have chosen not to sign with mainstream talent agencies. According to him, these agencies control a significant portion of the college festival circuit, which creates plenty of opportunities during those months.
However, there is a big catch. That is – autonomy.
Signing with an agency can mean giving up fair shares of earnings and potentially needing permission to take independently sourced gigs. For musicians who value creative and professional freedom, the obstruction of freewill shall always be a problem.
Aritro describes these commercial shows as financially better, but acknowledges that they often come at the cost of original music.
“The corporate and wedding gigs are where the actual money is,” Sarbik resonates. “But becoming a part of that circuit means that you are likely to compromise your original music to keep paying the bills.”
And honestly, it is difficult to blame musicians for making that choice. Bills do not care about artistic integrity. When rent is due, being a good musician isn’t a cop-out.
The price of making and selling music
Arguably, the biggest misconception about music income is that once the song is written and uploaded, the worst is over. But it only gets harder from there.
Sarbik describes the broader problem as a systemic one. “Being an independent artist in India right now essentially means you are your own patron,” he says.
That patron is usually paying for everything out of pocket.
There is still a strange perception that putting a song on Spotify or Apple Music automatically means money starts coming in. For most independent artists, it doesn’t.
Sarbik calls it “the illusion of streaming revenue.” A song appearing on Spotify or Apple Music might look like a source of income from the outside, but the actual revenue remains tiny unless a song reaches huge numbers. Couple this with Spotify’s algorithmic tendency to push mindless muzak further across their platform, and we have what Aditya calls “negligible” revenue.
Artists need millions of streams before the numbers become meaningful. For musicians who are still building an audience, streaming is often an investment that may or may not pay off later.
This creates a frustrating loop. Artists spend money to record and distribute music, then spend more money promoting it, while the actual revenue from streams remains too small to even recover recording costs.
And now thanks to the boom of creator-led economies, musicians are expected to become content creators too.
Want sponsorships? Build a social media following.
Want brands to notice you? Make content.
Want people to listen to your music? Feed the algorithm.
Sarbik believes this has created another burden for independent artists. Selling tickets for your local gig next weekend now means dedicating your week to being a monkey for the masses first, before hitting the jam pad for rehearsals. Emerging musicians are increasingly expected to devote themselves to “full-time content creation, marketing etc. to just stay relevant in the algorithm,” he says. And in the end what works the best on social media for the Indian audience is often laced with a hint of Bollywood essence. Hence, the vicious loop is completed.
While it is fair to say that it’s not impossible to enjoy making reels, documenting the creative process and sharing behind-the-scenes content. But when content creation becomes a requirement for financial survival, musicians end up spending more time marketing themselves than making music.
The more different you are, the harder it gets
For artists who make mainstream music, there are already so many financial hurdles. For artists working in genres still relatively niche in India (and abroad alike), the road becomes even narrower.
Dott’s experience is a good example.
After releasing his first music on DSPs in 2024, he signed with an independent Swedish label. For around seven months, the label paid him monthly, allowing him to focus entirely on music.
Although it worked financially for sometime, creatively it didn’t, eventually.
The label wanted him to follow its formula and change his discography. Dotty chose to leave rather than compromise the kind of music he wanted to make.
“I’d rather struggle than let someone clean the dirt out of my music,” he says. He returned to writing jobs to pay his bills and support his music.
For metal musicians like Akash, however, even finding a commercially viable lane can feel almost impossible.
“The numbers are very low since metal music is a very niche market,” says Akash. While the overall number of metal shows has increased over the years with landmark events like BOA, he believes the scene still has a long way to go before musicians can actually earn from the genre.
“There is no earning from doing metal music. It is impossible to earn a single buck from that,” Akash says. “There is no margin. There is no industry yet.”
The problem, according to him, isn’t simply that metal doesn’t make money. There is also a lack of awareness around the genre itself. A large part of India’s population remains unfamiliar with heavy music, which naturally limits the number of venues, sponsors and commercial opportunities available to metal artists.
“Metal music is still treated as something which is alien in nature,” he says. “People still raise their eyebrows in utter disbelief when they see a metal band play live or listen to metal music for the first time.”
The independent music ecosystem also often rewards artists after they have already proved themselves rather than investing in them while they are still unknown. Sponsors want numbers, organisers want ticket sales, brands want social media reach and platforms want engagement. But nobody wants to take the first risk.
“What we really need in India are sponsors, recruiters and organisers who actually believe in versatile musical styles instead of only chasing whatever generic trend is working right now,” Dotty says. He argues that the industry needs to let unconventional artists exist before expecting them to become commercially successful.
“You have to let the weird stuff exist before you can build a new culture around it.”
For Akash, the biggest problem isn’t simply a lack of money. It is a lack of people willing to invest time and energy into building the scene. “We need more passionate people,” he says. “People who can keep their egos aside and genuinely would want to work with each other and help the scene grow.”
His dream is simple – a typical Indian household playing metal on a Sunday afternoon without anyone treating it like an invasion from another planet.
So, what exactly is missing?
There isn’t a singular solution because there isn’t only one problem.
Artists need better venues, better pay, grants, sponsors, managers, booking agents, legal support, affordable equipment and access to professional music infrastructure. But perhaps the biggest thing they need is someone willing to take a chance before the numbers arrive.
Dotty believes the ecosystem is too obsessed with artists who are already successful.
“Sometimes you have to support the artist while they’re still unknown, let them experiment, fail, grow and build their own audience,” he says.
Aditya believes India needs something closer to a music union, where musicians can collectively access support and potentially government backing.
Sarbik wants more public arts councils and institutional funding that can reach independent artists across socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. He also points to the lack of specialised booking agents, sync licensing managers and music attorneys.
At present, many musicians are their own managers, publicists, booking agents and accountants.
We understand that a restaurant has labour costs. We understand why a movie ticket costs INR 300 or more. We understand why an international artist can charge thousands for a concert ticket.
But when your local band charges INR 500, people still ask whether they can get in for free.
The underground needs support before it becomes mainstream
The problem isn’t that India’s independent music scene lacks talent. If anything, there is an overwhelming amount of it. The problem is that the financial structure around that talent hasn’t caught up.
Government initiatives could offer more grants, subsidised insurance and publicly funded showcases. Venues could establish minimum payment standards and enforce timelines for clearing artist payments. Brands could invest in emerging artists instead of waiting until they have millions of followers. Better managers, booking agents, lawyers and A&R professionals could help artists navigate an industry that currently expects them to figure everything out alone.
There are already examples worth building on.
Aditya points to Bengaluru’s BLR Hubba, where local artists get a well-funded platform to perform.
“We need more events like this, more competitions or showcases of local original talent,” he says. “This will create a culture that will incentivise artists to commit to their art.”
But government and industry support can only go so far without an audience. Audiences have a direct financial impact on whether an artist can continue.
So, buy the ticket. Buy the T-shirt. Listen to the album. Share the song. Show up to the gig. Fund the crowdfunding campaign.
These aren’t asking for too much. In fact, they are the bare minimum requirements for supporting a creative ecosystem.
Most independent musicians in India aren’t asking for overnight fame or celebrity lifestyles. They want the opportunity to build a career without constantly worrying about whether their next release is financially feasible.
For now, many are still doing it the hard way.
Sarbik perhaps captures the strange contradiction best. Being an independent musician right now requires being “absolutely madly in love with their art.”
There might be something inherently beautiful about that dedication, but there is also something deeply unfair about a society that requires artists to be almost irrationally devoted just to keep going.
India’s independent music scene is alive, messy, ambitious, and still making noise. What it needs now is a sustainable framework that allows those musicians to stay alive too.
Because passion can write songs and play gigs. But eventually, someone still has to pay the bills.
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