Saregama, India’s oldest record label, is using generative AI to build music videos for the film songs in its catalog that date back to the 1960s and 1970s.
For that music, the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group company says it owns the recording and the composition – but not the original video.
Speaking on Saregama’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday (August 4), Vikram Mehra, the company’s Managing Director, said the label owns “all the rights connected to the song, except the right of the original music video”.
Saregama’s flagship YouTube channel, Saregama Music, has roughly 64 million subscribers.
The videos were “not sold to the music labels because there was no market for it” when the films were made, Mehra said.
He called the missing videos one of the “weaknesses” in Saregama‘s older catalog – visuals that stayed locked inside the film negatives controlled by the movies’ owners.
It is a gap no rival carries, Mehra said, “because everybody else is a more modern time music label”. (Saregama was founded in around 1901).
Shooting new videos for the songs was never economical, Mehra said.
With AI, “very true to real” videos can now be created “at a very, very low cost, which may start making financial sense”, Mehra said.
A music video made with AI “can be INR 70,000 also”, he said – around $740.
The plan targets Gen X and Gen Z at once.
For Gen X, Saregama would keep the original audio and give it “more contemporary looking videos”.
For Gen Z, it would “modify the audio a bit”, with a “change in the instrumentation while… maintaining the composition”, and attach a new video.
Saregama‘s second AI-content strand is spoken word.
Its content team is “using third-party GenAI tools to create neighboring audio content like podcast using Saregama’s songs”, Mehra said.
He described a podcast built around a 50-year-old reminiscing, scored with Saregama‘s songs “connected to romance or separation or friendship”.
Saregama would then license the format to third-party podcast companies, Mehra said.
Mehra separated the generative AI now being tested from the predictive AI Saregama already uses to choose which music to buy.
Predictive AI has been running for four years, he said, claiming Saregama‘s “hit-to-flop ratio is better than any competitor in the market”.
Generative AI, by contrast, is “the real gamechanger in the room right now”, Mehra said.
The predictive models feed a content-acquisition budget the company put at INR 300 crore to INR 350 crore ($31.6m to $36.9m) for the year.
On the defensive side, Saregama restated its stance in the dispute over AI and copyright.
“Saregama’s position on AI-based music remains that we support licensed innovation, but will continue our fight against unlicensed exploitation of our music,” Mehra said.
All of Saregama‘s new digital licensing agreements now build in “protection against dilution of our rights and any potential fraud”, he added.
Mehra called on streaming services to assign “no value” to AI-generated music in May.
Elsewhere, Saregama is winding down its own film business and channeling its film-music investment through Bhansali Productions, the Sanjay Leela Bhansali studio in which it invested $36m in December 2025 for the music rights to its future films.
Its Gen Z reach runs largely through Pocket Aces, the studio behind FilterCopy, which Saregama acquired in full for $45 million in 2024.
Saregama‘s catalog runs to about 180,000 songs and grows by roughly 5,000 releases a year, according to the company.
In its 2026 financial year, 60% of the company’s music revenue came from content released after 2000 – “of which 45%” came from songs released after 2020, Mehra said.
Saregama already monetizes its older catalog directly through Carvaan, its line of retro pre-loaded music players and a companion streaming app that packages the label’s evergreen songs into curated stations.
Elsewhere on the call, Saregama’s leadership said the firm has set up two AI teams; one for content and one to optimize internal processes.
But the spending sits inside the existing content budget, with no incremental investment, Mehra said.
Saregama reported fiscal Q1 (calendar Q2 2026) revenue from operations of INR 263.6 crore ( USD $27.8m), up 27% YoY.
Adjusted EBITDA rose 69% to INR 112.4 crore ($11.8m), and revenue from the music vertical grew 39% to INR 230.6 crore ($24.3m).
Mehra tied the catalog push to a resurgence of nostalgia that, he said, “surprises us” in the volume of older songs surfacing on Instagram.
He reiterated Saregama‘s view that India could reach 100 million paid subscribers if free music is curtailed and pricing lands near INR 100 a month.
Paid streaming reaches about 3% of the country’s internet users, Mehra said, citing Goldman Sachs – which expects emerging markets to drive most of streaming’s subscriber growth.
India added nearly 4 million paid subscriptions in 2025, taking its total to 14.4 million, according to a report from EY and FICCI.
Last week, Universal Music Group announced that its own new releases in India will be available exclusively to paying streaming subscribers for their first 72 hours.
After their first 72 hours, they will also become available on ad-supported services.Music Business Worldwide
