Zee Music Company: Bollywood Music Powerhouse
Zee Music Company (ZMC) went from a standing start in 2014 to becoming one of India's biggest music labels in just a few years. Owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL), it built its empire by acquiring Bollywood soundtrack rights at scale — and then moved into original, non-film music.
Launch: 31 March 2014
Zee Music Company was launched on 31 March 2014 to acquire, publish, license, and distribute film and non-film music. At launch, ZEEL's CEO Punit Goenka framed the move as a content play: as a content company, owning intellectual property was essential, and digital revenues were driving growth in the music market. ZEEL had previously operated a music-publishing division called Zee Records, which began operations in 1994, but ZMC was a far more ambitious venture.
Growth Through Acquisitions
ZMC grew by striking music-rights deals with major Bollywood production houses, including Fox Star Studios, UTV, Balaji Motion Pictures, Excel Entertainment, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, and Bhansali Productions. The strategy worked: by 2019, the label was releasing around 250 film albums a year — 60 in Hindi and 190 in regional languages — plus more than 600 non-film singles. In 2019, it claimed a 55% share of new Bollywood music released during the year. Its catalogue spans Hindi-film music, regional-language releases, devotional music, and independent singles, and in its 2025–26 earnings update ZEEL reported a music library of more than 20,000 songs.
The YouTube Engine
Like T-Series, Zee Music built a massive YouTube presence. Its channel became one of India's most-subscribed music channels, and its YouTube network has grown to hundreds of millions of subscribers across its channels. Soundtracks from films like Kalank, Gully Boy, and Kesari became major streaming successes for the label, with the Kesari song "Ve Maahi" among its most-streamed tracks. This digital reach gave Zee Music a direct line to audiences that once depended entirely on radio, television, and physical sales.
The Move Into Original Music
In recent years, Zee Music has pushed beyond film soundtracks into artist-led, non-film music. It signed composer, singer, and pianist Adnan Sami for exclusive non-film releases, and onboarded contemporary pop artist and producer QARAN — a sign that even the biggest Bollywood labels now see independent, artist-driven music as a growth area. For independent artists, ZMC's evolution is instructive: the labels that once only bought film rights are now competing to sign original artists.
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