Replay 2021: JioSaavn maps top audio streaming trends

With Replay 2021 JioSaavn, South Asia’s largest music and audio-streaming service, has mapped the latest trends across the country to find out audiences’ most  favorite playlists, artists and podcasts by analysing its platform data between January and November 2021, across India. 

As the economy opened up, users returned to pre-Covid listening  behaviour with 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. contributing to most consumptions on the platform. The gathered data indicated Justin Bieber and Jubin Nautiyal being the #1 most streamed artist on JioSaavn. While international artists like Alan Walker and DJ Snake and Indian artists, Arijit Singh and Alka Yagnik maintained their ranks as most popular artists in the English & Hindi languages respectively; BTS was the most streamed K-pop  band in 2021. 

Songs created by independent artists across genres were also extremely well received, thanks to the diverse community of fans who engage with and follow new music created by indie artists. Independent Indian artists like B Praak, Payal Dev and Stebin Ben have emerged as top artists on the platform this year. 

Amongst songs, ‘Peaches’, ‘STAY’ and ‘At My Worst’ were the most streamed in English language and Pop remained a favoured genre for international music. ‘Jalebi Baby’ by Tesher and ‘Sugar & Brownies’ by Dharia were also amongst the top streamed songs in 2021. 'Lut Gaye' was the most streamed Hindi song followed by ‘Thoda Thoda Pyaar’ and 'Baarish Ban Jaana’. As a result of the pause in new releases during the pandemic in early 2021, old catalogue songs which were older than 12 months, gained more popularity. Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik’s ‘Mera Dil Bhi Kitna Pagal Hai’ is in the Top 20 tracks of this year on the app. 

K-Pop as a genre saw a consistent growth in streams from April'21 to August'21 and has been constant ever since. Beyond Pop, EDM and Hip Hop, there were two genres that saw an upward trend: Devotional & Desi Hip-Hop. Devotional as a genre saw a significant rise from July'21, and kept on increasing month on month recording an all time high streams in October'21 for this year. The category has been an outperformer since late 2020,  Desi Hip-Hop also saw a spike in July'21. 

Apart from Hindi and English, the  top 5 regional languages on JioSaavn were observed to be - Telugu, Punjabi, Tamil, Bhojpuri & Kannada (October 2021). Telugu accounted for the highest streams in regional language. A new gainer in regional languages - Bhojpuri, saw the maximum upward trend from January to October ( 30% increase)

Through 2021 listeners continued to use podcasts as a preferred source of entertainment and information. Hindi podcasts saw an upward surge throughout the year and Bengali podcasts witnessed a spike particularly in the months of April and August ‘21. As a category, ‘Stories’ was noticed to gain listeners throughout the year.

This data from JioSaavn showcases some interesting trends and shifts in behaviour of the country’s audience. It highlights the strong growth of the audio streaming industry and the increasing popularity of online streaming in the larger entertainment landscape. It also highlights the significance of constant innovation coupled with listening to audience preference, leading to a unique experience that the audiences look forward to. 

The platform is also set  to launch a limited time offer of 1 month subscription for 1 rupee. The offer will be launched on 15th December and will be valid till 31st December for Jio users only.