India's Live Music Market Hits 19% Growth—Brands Are Betting On Grassroots Talent

Most consumer brands treat music the same way they treat billboards. They rent the space, put their logo on it, and move on when the budget runs out. Havells India is trying something different.

The consumer electronics company has teamed up with its longtime agency partner WPP Media to launch Havells mYOUsic, a program to discover and develop musical talent across India. This is not a one-season contest. It is a multi-city, multi-year commitment to building a music ecosystem the brand can genuinely call its own.

The launch comes as India's live music market hits a new gear. The organized live events sector crossed INR 12,000 crore (roughly US$1.44 billion) in 2024 and is growing at close to 19% a year. Brands competing for a piece of that audience are spending more on music than ever before, with youth-focused companies now directing 3-7% of their annual marketing budgets toward music, up from just 1-2% a few years ago.

From Renting Stages to Building Artists

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Most brand music programs follow a predictable formula. A company writes a check, gets its name on a stage or a playlist, and waits for the association to lift brand awareness. Havells mYOUsic takes a different route. Shortlisted artists do not just perform. They attend a structured bootcamp covering creativity, copyright, publishing, and how the music industry actually works. The program plans to produce and release 25 original songs within 2026, with artists retaining the rights to their own work.

That last detail matters more than it looks. Most brand contests treat artist output as brand property. By explicitly focusing on rights education and ownership, Havells is positioning mYOUsic as a genuine investment in artist careers, not just a content acquisition play.

"Havells mYOUsic is our commitment to providing these artists with the direction, exposure, and most importantly, the knowledge and rights to own their craft and build long-term creative futures," said Mukesh Kumar Jain, Vice President at Havells India Ltd.

Early Numbers Show Grassroots Demand

The early traction is hard to dismiss. The Delhi phase drew over 250 on-ground entries and more than 100 online submissions. When the program expanded to Indore in early April 2026, over 200 artists showed up at Sage University to participate across singing, composing, lyric writing, and music production.

That level of grassroots response within weeks of launch suggests genuine demand, particularly in cities outside the major metros. India's tier-two and tier-three cities contain enormous untapped creative talent. Most of those artists have no clear path into the industry. A structured program that travels to them rather than waiting for them to come to Mumbai or Delhi is a smart way to build the kind of loyalty that outlasts any single campaign.

The Havells-WPP Media relationship also provides a different kind of foundation. The two organizations have worked together for over 20 years. That history means mYOUsic is not a new transactional deal. It is a deepening of an existing institutional relationship, with both parties co-investing in an IP asset rather than executing a time-limited activation.

A Pattern Other Brands Are Starting to Follow

Havells is not operating alone in this space, but it is ahead of most.

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Kia India recently partnered with HYBE INDIA, the entertainment company behind BTS, to run a large-scale global music audition targeting Indian talent. Kotak Mahindra Bank has backed major international concerts and reported 30-40% increases in customer engagement as a result. The pattern across categories is consistent: brands that invest in music beyond simple logo placement are seeing measurable returns on audience attention.

The cautionary note comes from Red Bull. The energy drink brand built one of the most respected music education programs in the world with Red Bull Music Academy, then shut it down in 2019, stranding hundreds of artists who had built careers around access to its platform. The lesson is that brand-owned music programs carry real dependency risk if artists cannot function independently when the brand exits.

Havells appears to have absorbed that lesson. By emphasizing rights ownership and transferable skills from the outset, the program is designed so that artists benefit whether or not the brand stays involved indefinitely.

What Marketing Leaders Should Watch

The question for other brands is not whether to invest in music. Many are already doing that. The question is whether to invest in music as a rental agreement or as a genuine asset.

Programs that produce owned IP, such as original songs with clear rights frameworks, become durable brand assets. Programs that simply attach a logo to someone else's event generate awareness that expires when the event does.

India's music and creator economy is large enough, and growing fast enough, that first-mover advantage in talent development will be worth something. The brands that build relationships with the next generation of artists now will have a different kind of equity to draw on in five years.

Vinit Karnik of WPP Media framed it clearly: "Far more than a fleeting campaign, this initiative establishes the enduring foundation of a music IP focused on empowering artists through ownership, rights awareness, and sustained career pathways."

For marketing leaders watching from outside India, the same logic applies across Southeast Asia and other high-growth markets where independent creator economies are taking shape faster than traditional music industry infrastructure can support them. The brands that build the infrastructure may end up owning the culture.