Warner Music is expanding its nearly four-year-old distribution deal with Mumbai-headquartered record label and film production company Tips Music.
Back in 2020, shortly after launching Warner Music India, Warner signed a distribution deal that covered Tips’ catalog of more than 13,000 Hindi-language songs.
Under the deal, Warner Music India distributed the catalog locally and Warner’s indie distribution arm, ADA, handled international distribution. With its global reach, Warner was able to provide specialist commercial support across various digital service providers (DSPs) landing key playlist spots for Tips’ frontline and catalog releases.
Now, the partnership is expanding to include commercial and distribution responsibilities for all of Tips Music’s repertoire of more than 30,000 songs in 23 Indian languages.
“Warner Music has been our trusted partner for the last few years and it has worked very well for both of us,” Kumar Taurani, Managing Director of Tips Industries Limited, said in a statement.
According to the announcement, the new, wider distribution deal “is the beginning of a larger partnership between both companies. With Tips Music’s ‘Must Have Hits’ catalog and Warner Music’s distribution strength, we envision Tips Music to become one of the Top Three music labels in India”.
“Over the last few years, Warner Music has enjoyed access to Tips Music’s amazing Hindi catalog and been able to offer unique sales support, which has seen us successfully promote its Bollywood soundtracks to a global audience,” said Alfonso Perez-Soto, President, Emerging Markets, Warner Music.
“We’re now able to tap into even more incredible music, and our teams around the world will be looking to connect Tips Music’s artists and songs with more international fans. At Warner Music, we believe we can be a major force in further growing Bollywood music’s popularity around the world.”
Tips is behind many smash Bollywood hits, including the Race series of movies. The company’s music division is home to many popular Bollywood artists including Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, and Sonu Nigam.
“With Tips Music’s ‘Must Have Hits’ catalog and Warner Music’s distribution strength, we envision Tips Music to become one of the Top Three music labels in India.”
Kumar Taurani, Tips Industries
Amid an ongoing boom in the Indian music business, Tips has recorded double-digit revenue growth in recent quarters. In Q3 of its fiscal 2023, which corresponds to the last quarter of calendar 2023, Tips Industries Limited recorded INR ₹648 million (USD $7.78 million) in revenue from operations, up 27% YoY.
The company’s operational EBITDA soared to INR ₹434 million (USD $5.21 million) in the quarter, from INR ₹259 million ($3.15 million) in the same period a year earlier.
The company has been working to capitalize on the growing popularity of Indian music around the world, including by signing a global publishing deal with Sony Music Publishing. That deal, inked in 2023, covers Tips’ entire 30,000+ publishing catalog, and includes administration, synchronization, and catalog promotion in international markets.
With the new, expanded deal with Warner, “the audiences on various international and Indian streaming services will now be able to stream our music,” said Hari Nair, Tips Industries’ recently-appointed CEO.
“Most importantly this deal also enables us to distribute our music to the world’s largest social media platform, Meta. Overall, this partnership will improve distribution of our content thus enhancing revenue for our company.”
Tips Industries COO Girish Kumar added: “This distribution deal allows us to focus more on our core competency – finding new talent, building our own music and acquiring more film music content.
“Our vision back in the 1980’s was ‘To Introduce Promising Singers’ – what TIPS as a brand stands for. Our artists will benefit from the best via this massive distribution deal. Artists partnering with us, and powered by Warner Music, will be truly global.”
“At Warner Music, we believe we can be a major force in further growing Bollywood music’s popularity around the world.”
Alfonso Perez-Soto, Warner Music
According to IFPI data, in 2022, the latest year for which full-year data is available, India’s recorded music business was worth $319 million, up 48% YoY.
A recent study from EY India found that that the country’s music publishing business grew 2.5-fold in three years, rising from INR ₹3.4 billion (USD $40.8 million) in 2019-2020 to INR ₹8.84 billion ($106.1 million) in 2022-2023.
While those numbers are still small relative to the world’s largest music markets, on a sheer volume basis, India is rapidly catching up. Data from Luminate’s year-end report for 2023 found that the country clocked 1.037 trillion on-demand music streams (audio and video) last year, behind only the US at 1.454 trillion.
Given the much faster increase in stream count in India versus the US, India could become the largest streaming market by volume within the next few years.Music Business Worldwide
