Last month witnessed the long-awaited return of BTS with the release of their new album ‘Arirang’. While the comeback effort broke streaming records globally, lead single “Swim”, somewhat surprisingly, did not follow earlier hits such as“Dynamite”, “Butter” and “Permission To Dance” to the No.1 spot in India. The album, meanwhile, debuted at No.2 on Spotify’s chart for the country. For any other international release, that would be a remarkable achievement but given BTS’s chart history, it feels like the LP has underperformed here. How far is this true? And what are the reasons for it? On this special episode, we’re joined by our friends, the hosts of the ‘K-Pop in India’ podcast, Shreya Khaladkar and Soham Sengupta, to help us answer these questions.

Pre-pandemic, India’s handful of multi-genre music festivals focused on independent musicians in the traditional sense of the term. In the recent past, as the lines between indie and mainstream have blurred, there’s a lot more pop on festival bills, and it seems like programmers are closely watching the charts. On this week’s episode, we talk about why this is happening and the pros and cons of the trend.

While we constantly hear about the potential of Indian music to cross over into the rest of the world, what’s relatively less spoken about is how the rest of the world is increasingly trying to cross over into India. From foreign delegations scoping out the scene at conferences to international artists touring at a higher rate than ever before, we discuss where and how this is happening, and most importantly, why. As always, we look at key movements on the Spotify Weekly Top Songs India chart, this time for the survey dated February 5, 2025.