Getting Your Music on JioSaavn and Gaana

Which Indian streaming services still exist in 2026?

Two: JioSaavn and Gaana. India had four significant domestic music streaming services three years ago; the field halved between 2024 and 2025, and a great deal of distribution advice online has not caught up.

This matters commercially, not just factually. If a distributor’s store list still promises Wynk and Hungama, that list has not been maintained since at least 2025 — which is a reasonable thing to ask about before you hand over a catalogue.

Why can you not upload to JioSaavn yourself?

JioSaavn has no self-serve upload tool for artists. Like Spotify and Apple Music, it ingests audio, artwork and metadata only from licensed distribution partners, and it pays royalties back through the same channel. There is no route from a personal account into the JioSaavn catalogue.

That single fact explains most of the confusion in search results. Services that appear to offer “JioSaavn upload” are distributors: they take your file, package it to JioSaavn’s specification, deliver it through the partner pipeline, and pass the reporting back to you. The full distribution guide covers the file specs and metadata that delivery needs.

What do the Indian stores need that global ones do not?

Three metadata fields decide whether an Indian release is findable domestically: the language of the lyrics, the script of the title, and a transliteration a listener would actually type. Global stores tolerate sloppiness here; Indian search does not.

• Language, not country. A Marathi song tagged “Hindi” competes in the wrong catalogue and reaches the wrong editorial teams. Set the language of the lyrics.
• Both scripts. Supply the native-script title and a Roman transliteration wherever a secondary title field exists — phone keyboards are usually set to Roman input even for Devanagari-language songs.
• Consistent artist name. One spelling forever. Variations create separate artist profiles and split your streams across identities that are painful to merge later.

Our regional distribution guide goes deeper on this for Ahirani, Marathi and Bhojpuri releases, where the metadata decision is worth more than any promotion budget.

Where did the reach go after the shutdowns?

It consolidated into JioSaavn plus the global majors, and into caller tunes. Airtel’s move is the one most people miss: having closed Wynk, Airtel now bundles Apple Music for its subscribers, which makes Apple Music a materially more important destination for an Indian release than it was in 2023.

The scale underneath is unchanged. India’s total telephone subscriber base stood at 1,348.08 million at the end of June 2026, with Jio at 503.58 million and Airtel at 486.79 million wireless subscribers, per TRAI subscription reports. The audience did not shrink when the apps closed — it moved.

What the consolidation did not touch

CRBT caller tunes were unaffected, because a caller tune is a telecom product rather than an app. JioTunes, Airtel Hellotunes, Vi Tunes and BSNL caller tunes all still operate on the same networks they always did, and none of that revenue has an equivalent on Spotify or Apple Music.

The practical effect is that caller tunes are now a larger share of what an Indian independent release earns than they were when four domestic streaming apps competed for the same listener. For regional and devotional catalogues in particular, CRBT is frequently the single biggest line on the statement. The submission process and the 6-to-14-business-day activation cycle are covered in the caller tune setup guide, and the service itself on the CRBT page.

How should an Indian release be planned in 2026?

Deliver everywhere, but weight your attention where the listeners actually are:

1. JioSaavn and the global majors — Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music — as the streaming base.
2. CRBT on all four networks, submitted at the same time as the streaming release rather than after it, so the caller tune is live while your promotion is still running.
3. YouTube Content ID, so the fan uploads and reels a regional hit generates pay you rather than the uploader. See the Content ID guide.
4. Gaana included because it costs nothing to include, but not planned around.