Why Arijit Singh no longer needs Bollywood

For the last 15 years, Arijit Singh’s voice has provided Hindi cinema emotional infrastructure. From soul-strewn ballads to plaintive anthems of love and loss, his voice grounded major motion pictures in affective reality. In a culture where music often exists to illuminate star personas on screen, Arijit Singh’s vocal presence became cinematic shorthand for depth of feeling.

And yet, at the peak of this dominance, the singing sensation announced on Tuesday that he will no longer accept new assignments as a playback vocalist, choosing instead to pursue music independently. What might otherwise be dismissed as an artistic caprice reflects something deeper: the dissolution of Bollywood’s monopoly over musical meaning in India’s streaming era. Arijit Singh’s move reveals that an artist once defined by the movies no longer needs them to reach and resonate with millions.

To grasp the magnitude of this shift, it’s imperative to consider the streaming data. As of early 2026, Arijit Singh ranked among the most followed artists on Spotify with over 170 million followers, placing him ahead of global superstars such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, thereby solidifying his position as one of the most streamed musicians worldwide. In its 2025 wrapped, the global music giant shared: “India hit play 7.1 billion times and kept landing on Arijit. Seven years on top and still everyone’s first choice.”

The rise of indie and regional music

What these numbers obscure — but streaming trends reveal — is how consumption behavior has evolved. In India and beyond, independent, non-film music is no longer a niche. For instance, the most streamed song on Spotify India in 2023 was “Maan Meri Jaan” by King and Saurabh Lokahnde. In spite of not being part of any movie, it had over 275 million streams.

In fact, non-film music accounts for as much as 90% of listening on Spotify across languages such as Punjabi, a stark contrast to traditional film dominance in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu markets. Moreover, Indian independent artists (hip-hop, pop, regional) are among the most exported from the country on global streaming platforms, with over 65% of top-export songs not coming from Bollywood.

Arijit Singh exemplifies this rupture. Though still largely beloved for his contribution in Hindi films, his catalog exists largely on its own terms — decoupled from narrative contexts and actor identities. Listeners encounter his songs not as film moments but as individual experiences. In the playlist economy shaped by algorithms and personal curations, the source film matters far less than the emotional world his music evokes.

Winds of change

This structural transition mirrors other global evolutions in artist autonomy and ownership. Few contemporary parallels resonate as powerfully as Taylor Swift’s re-recording campaign. In an unprecedented move, Swift acquired the ownership of her early catalog by releasing “Taylor’s Version” editions of her albums — a strategic reclamation of artistic agency in a business traditionally tilted toward labels. These re-recordings have attracted hundreds of millions of streams, revitalized avenues for catalog revenue, and reshaped industry norms around hierarchical and artistic control.

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The massive dent that Swift has caused in the global music landscape underlines two major shifts: first, that audiences are willing to engage deeply with music outside traditional release cycles (albums, radio, film soundtracks) and, second, that artists can now wield their music as enduring assets rather than film components or label outputs. The choice heralded by Swift to seize control of her catalogs and explore multiple release avenues has trickled down to India, restructuring our burgeoning music economy.

Meanwhile for Arijit Singh, this decision allows him to escape a role in which his voice existed primarily to support someone else’s visual narrative. Within the Bollywood system, singers are often paid commissions and receive modest royalties compared to the long-term value their recordings accrue globally. Independence recasts the artist not as labor but as rights-holder — with the potential to monetize across platforms, concerts, synchronization deals, and legacy catalog revenues.

Of course, decades of Hindi film history are littered with voices behind blockbuster soundtracks that were central to the film’s box-office performance yet remained institutionally subordinate. Take for instance, Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar. Inarguably India’s most iconic singers, they achieved extraordinary status within cinema’s ecosystem but could never fully disrupt it. Arijit Singh’s departure from playback, therefore, marks not merely artistic evolution, but industrial transformation: the moment a playback singer of massive global reach no longer needs movies to sustain a career.

His choice also reflects creative fatigue within Hindi film music itself. Bollywood compositions have begun to increasingly operate within familiar formulas. When every love song begins to resemble another, even a voice like Arijit Singh’s can feel stale and constrained. Independent releases and collaborations can give what Bollywood playback singing no longer can— the freedom to explore textures, forms, and rhythms without cinematic constraints, marking a shift that in turn highlights how listeners now seek sonic variety and individuality over repetition and redundancy.

A high-risk reorientation

However, it is crucial to understand that Arijit Singh’s decision does not reflect the end of Hindi film music’s relevance entirely. Cinema still offers unmatched visibility, marketing muscle, and cultural imprint. But the balance of leverage has shifted. When the most streamed Indian artist commands massively global followings and sustainable independent economics, the film soundtrack becomes one vehicle among many, not the dominion.

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Arijit Singh’s exit from playback is thus less a retreat than a reorientation — toward autonomy, ownership, and a direct relationship with his audience. In doing so, he signals a new paradigm in Indian music: one in which the voice travels free of the hero, and where the sound itself carries meaning, unanchored from the screen, yet grounded in millions of individual experiences.

In an era defined by playlists instead of theater halls, algorithmic discovery instead of release dates, and direct artist-listener bonds instead of mediated cinema moments, Arijit Singh’s voice no longer needs to hide behind a hero’s face — because the world already recognizes it on its own.

But the uncertainty remains. Even at Arijit Singh’s scale, independence is not a proven substitute for the mass euphoria that cinema still delivers. Film songs benefit from narrative memory, repeat exposure, and the mythology of the screen; independent releases will have to work harder to stay lodged in public imagination. India’s music ecosystem, despite its streaming boom, remains unevenly monetized, with algorithms fickle and audience attention increasingly fragmented.

It is highly likely that Arijit Singh’s withdrawal from films produces fewer public anthems, not more. Yet if this experiment has a plausible catalyst, it is him. Arijit Singh occupies a rare position in the contemporary Indian cultural zeitgeist where his voice in itself functions as a brand, capable of carrying emotional weight without cinematic scaffolding. If anyone can test the outer limits of independence within India’s film-dominated music economy—and cause a measurable dent—it is the one singer whose absence from the movies would be felt as loudly as his presence once was.