Odia Music is Having Its Moment on Spotify
ସ୍ପଟ଼ିଫାଇରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ସଙ୍ଗୀତ
Last March, a song called "Dharani" by Bhubaneswar-based indie artist Rohan K appeared on Spotify's New Music Friday India playlist. By the end of the week, it had 800,000 streams. By the end of the month, it had been featured by Spotify's editorial team in six countries.
"I recorded it in my bedroom with a second-hand microphone," Rohan says. "I didn't think anyone would listen."
This is the new reality of Odia music.
From Regional to Global
For most of its modern history, Odia music operated within a tight regional ecosystem: Tarang Music and Sidharth Music dominated radio and TV, film music fed Ollywood, and folk music survived in villages. The internet changed everything.
Streaming platforms — Spotify, Apple Music, JioSaavn, YouTube Music — don't care about geography. An Odia singer in Sambalpur can reach a listener in Seattle without a record label or a distributor. The gatekeepers have lost their gates.
The numbers reflect this. Odia music streams on Spotify grew 340% between 2022 and 2024. Several Odia songs have crossed 10 million streams. The Odia playlist "Folk Fusion: Odisha" was added to Spotify's editorial rotation in 2024, the first time an Odia playlist received such treatment.
The Fusion Generation
What's driving the growth isn't just distribution — it's sound. A new generation of Odia musicians is creating genuinely original music that fuses classical and folk roots with contemporary production. Sambalpuri rhythms under electronic beats. Odissi vocal techniques over lo-fi instrumentals. Rasarkeli folk songs reimagined as bedroom pop.
"I grew up listening to my grandmother sing Jhumer folk songs and also to Coldplay," says Priti, 21, whose project "Mati" blends Odia tribal music with ambient electronics. "My music is both of those things. It doesn't feel like a contradiction."
The Reels Effect
No account of Odia music's rise would be complete without Instagram Reels. Short clips of Odia songs — often set to devotional or folk music — have gone viral repeatedly, each time introducing the genre to new audiences outside Odisha.
"One 15-second Reel can do what five years of radio play couldn't," says Tarang Music's digital head. The company, which has been in Odia music for 30 years, has pivoted aggressively to digital, amassing over 2 billion YouTube views.
The moment isn't over. It's just starting.
