How to distribute music in India: the complete 2026 guide

Every song carries two separate rights, and confusing them is the most common mistake new artists make. The master is the actual recorded audio file. A distributor moves the master to streaming platforms, and whoever paid for and owns the recording controls it, regardless of who wrote the song.

The composition is the underlying song: the melody and lyrics as written. In India, composition royalties are collected separately through a copyright society, primarily IPRS, the Indian Performing Right Society, which is registered with the Copyright Office to administer musical and literary works and is required to distribute member royalties on a regular schedule.

A standard distributor only moves your master and collects streaming royalties on it. If you also wrote the song and want composition royalties, that runs through a separate publishing administration path. If a distributor never mentions this distinction, that is a sign their information is thin, not that the rights layer does not apply to you.

First you upload your audio, as a WAV rather than an MP3, so platforms receive full quality. Most distributors run automated checks on loudness, clipping, and duration at this stage. Then you add metadata: title, primary and featured artists, songwriter and producer credits, genre, language, and an explicit flag if relevant. Get spellings and artist name formatting exactly right here, because fixing it after a release goes live is slower and sometimes impossible.

Next you upload artwork at a minimum of 3000 by 3000 pixels, square, RGB, with no URLs, social handles, or text that is not part of the actual cover. Then you set splits: if more than one person is owed a share, enter each payee percentage before submission. Splits should total 100 percent and every payee should confirm their share before delivery. This is the single biggest source of payment disputes later, and it is entirely preventable at this step.

You then choose platforms and territories, defaulting to all unless you have a specific reason to exclude one, and set a release date with at least three to four weeks of lead time. That window is what Spotify and Apple Music editorial teams need to consider your track for playlists. A same-week upload skips that opportunity entirely.

Finally you submit, and the distributor delivers to each platform, anywhere from 24 hours to 10 days before release depending on distributor and plan. Your song goes live everywhere on the scheduled date, streams accumulate from that moment, and platforms report and pay the distributor on a delay of one to three months. The distributor then pays you according to your plan schedule.

The Indian streaming market changed a lot in the last two years, and many distributor websites still list platforms that no longer exist. The global platforms that matter are Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube itself through Content ID. The India-first platforms still operating are JioSaavn and Gaana.

Resso, Wynk Music, and Hungama Music have all shut down. If a distributor still lists these as delivery targets, treat it as a signal about how current their operation really is.

Spotify and YouTube lead usage in India, and Spotify leads paid subscriptions. A distributor that does not deliver to JioSaavn is missing a meaningful slice of Indian listener discovery, since it is one of the few platforms where regional and devotional content gets strong algorithmic placement.

Caller ring back tones, the clip a caller hears before you pick up, are sold as a paid subscription by Jio, Airtel, Vi, and BSNL. Listeners pay a small recurring fee to set a song as their caller tune, and that revenue flows back to the rights holder every month the subscription stays active.

For regional, devotional, Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Punjabi, and Marathi catalogues, caller tune revenue is frequently the single largest income line, often outearning streaming royalties for the same track, because it is a recurring subscription rather than a one-time payout.

CRBT delivery takes longer than streaming delivery, typically one to two weeks after your song goes live on streaming platforms, because telecom operators run a separate ingestion pipeline. Not every distributor delivers to all four operators, so confirm operator coverage specifically rather than accepting caller tune support as a single checkbox.

Compare on five things, in order. First, what you actually keep: every distributor structures this differently, whether a flat annual fee, a one-time per-release fee with a lifetime commission, or a pure percentage split. Read the real number, not the headline word distribution. Second, what happens if you stop paying: subscription models can pull your catalogue if you do not renew, while one-time and lifetime models do not carry that risk.

Third, caller tune coverage, asked as which operators specifically. Fourth, payout currency and method: rupee-native payout avoids the forex conversion losses that dollar-billed international distributors quietly pass on, and UPI or direct bank transfer beats a PayPal-only payout for most Indian artists. Fifth, split payee support: if you collaborate, can each co-writer or featured artist see their own share and get paid directly, or does everything route through one person's account.

Do you need a label to distribute in India? No. Independent artists can distribute without a label, and most distributors let you set a custom label name on your releases even when self-releasing.

Can you switch distributors without losing streams? Carrying forward your existing ISRC rather than generating a fresh one preserves your accumulated stream history and playlist placements on platforms that key off the ISRC. Ask any new distributor whether they support ISRC carry-forward.

Do streaming royalties alone make a living income? For most independent artists, not from streaming alone. Caller tune revenue, live performances, and sync licensing typically matter more for sustainable income in the Indian market, especially early in a catalogue's life.