Saregama India MD Says ‘AI Slop’ Shouldn’t Generate Royalties

A live performance from Sonu Nigam, who’s released several projects with Saregama. Photo Credit: Faisal Akram

Is it time to cut off streaming payments for works pumped out with artificial intelligence? Saregama India MD Vikram Mehra believes so, as he’s calling for “AI-generated slop” to be booted from the royalty pool altogether.

The Saregama higher-up of about 12 years explored this and other interesting subjects during his company’s earnings call for the fiscal fourth quarter, or January, February, and March 2026.

All told, the business pointed to INR 8.14 billion (currently $84.37 million, up 17%) in revenue from music licensing, management, and retail for the 12-month stretch, besides a net margin of $39.04 million/INR 3.77 billion and $10.85 million/INR 1.05 billion deployed on catalog acquisitions.

Back to the earnings call, Mehra indicated that Saregama has thus far experienced “no revenue leakage” and “no market share loss” from fully AI-generated uploads, which are said to have “no traction.”

Nevertheless, the exec expressed support for efforts to ensure that “the content pool money will be distributed only to genuine IP and not AI-generated slop.”

Do the positions – that royalties should be cut off for AI junk and that said junk is essentially without listeners – contradict one another? Not necessarily. While machine-generated audio isn’t taking over today, it’s definitely piling up on DSPs – to the tune of more than 75,000 AI “creations” uploaded daily, according to Deezer. (The figure is probably larger yet at present.)

In the longer term, one needn’t stretch the imagination to see how the tracks could significantly disrupt the royalty pool and platforms themselves with their sheer volume. Already, many fans are voicing complaints about AI audio’s presence – hence Spotify’s embrace of verification badges for proper talent.

On the other hand, “no traction” might be an understatement; AI hasn’t produced a number-one hit, but evidence suggests there’s a bit of legitimate listener interest in some of the tracks.

(Keep in mind that even after Spotify’s crackdown on non-music background noise, uploads of white, green, brown, and pink noise alike are still garnering plenty of streams.)

And as underscored by the reported revenue and rumored raise of Suno, to name one major example, there’s certainly demand for AI music on the generation side.

Acknowledging industry companies’ growing list of gen AI licensing deals, Mehra confirmed Saregama’s plans to likewise “engage commercially with many of these people” down the line.

The pacts, the MD continued “may become one more way in which our revenues from IP can be monetized.” Equally as noteworthy, on the heels of Spotify’s pricing adjustments in India, Mehra also emphasized the belief that domestic consumers’ shift to paid streaming would accelerate if free listening options were axed outright.