If you still think “global pop star” means someone from Los Angeles or London, the spreadsheets would like a word.
On 24 September, music analytics company Chartmetric published a big picture look at how artist success is spreading around the world. The headline finding, as reported by Music Business Worldwide: the combined share of the world’s top tier artists held by the US and the UK has dropped from 55.7% in 2021 to 40.7% in 2026. India is one of the loudest reasons why.
First, What Is A “Superstar” Here?
Chartmetric sorts artists into career stages using its own scoring. The Superstar tier is the very top sliver. Per MBW, it covers roughly the top 0.02% of the more than 14 million artists Chartmetric tracks. That tier has grown from 972 artists in 2021 to 2,539 in 2026.
So this is not “who went viral on a Tuesday.” It is a small, measured group at the top of the pyramid, and it is getting more crowded and a lot less Anglo.
The US And UK Slide
Here is the split, per MBW and Dork:
- United States: 45.1% of Superstar tier artists in 2021, down to 33.1% in 2026
- United Kingdom: 10.6% down to 7.6%
- Combined: 55.7% down to 40.7%
Important nuance: this is a share, not a collapse. American and British artists are not disappearing. The tier is simply growing much faster everywhere else, so their slice of a bigger pie is shrinking.
India’s Numbers, And Why You Will See Different Ones
This is the part where we have to be careful, because the coverage does not line up neatly.
- Music Business Worldwide reports India’s new entrants into the Superstar tier rising from 25 in 2021 to 170 in 2026.
- Chartmetric’s own How Music Charts blog post gives a run of 25 in 2021, 154 in 2025 and 170 by mid 2026.
- Digital Music News cites 37 first time entrants in 2024, 154 in 2025 and 170 in 2026, and says India ranks second only to Brazil.
- Music Ally, meanwhile, headlined its piece as India “adding more superstar artists on Chartmetric than any other country.”
Where they agree: the 2025 and 2026 figures (154 and 170), and the direction of travel, which is steeply up. Where they differ: the early baseline and whether India is number one or number two for new superstar additions. The likely explanation is that “most added” and “fastest growth” are being measured differently, but Chartmetric has not published a single table that settles it, so we are showing you all versions rather than picking the most flattering one.
For comparison, MBW reports Brazil went from 50 to 127 and Nigeria from 4 to 27 between 2021 and 2025. Either way you cut it, India is in the top two.
Indian Music Is Travelling. Indian Listening Is Staying Home.
The most interesting data point is not about superstars at all. According to Chartmetric’s analysis, Indian artists’ entries on foreign Spotify charts went from 1,593 in 2021 to 7,736 in 2025, after peaking at 8,444 in 2024. Somewhere in 2022, foreign chart entries overtook domestic ones.
But the audience story runs the other way. Chartmetric points out that listening to Indian music outside the country is concentrated in a small set of markets: Pakistan, the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. And at home, fans are getting more concentrated, not less. Its example is Arijit Singh, whose India based share of his YouTube audience rose from 68.7% to 77.5%.
Chartmetric summed it up in one line: “India’s music is traveling further, while its audience is concentrating at home.”
Read that twice, because it is basically a strategy memo. Indian songs are landing on more charts abroad, largely through South Asian diaspora and neighbouring markets. Meanwhile, the domestic audience is so big and so engaged that it keeps pulling an artist’s centre of gravity back into India.
Why This Matters For The Indian Industry
Domestic scale is the engine. India’s streaming user base is huge, which means an artist can reach Superstar numbers on Chartmetric’s metrics with a mostly Indian audience. That explains how the country can add so many top tier acts in such a short time without a string of Western chart crossovers.
“Global” still has a narrow definition. The export story is real, but it runs through the Gulf, South and Southeast Asia and the diaspora. A Punjabi or Hindi hit topping charts in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur is a genuine achievement. It is not the same as breaking the US mainstream, and the data does not pretend otherwise.
Brands and labels should be reading this closely. For anyone buying artist partnerships, a Superstar tier Indian act increasingly means reach that is deep at home and concentrated in a few overseas corridors. That is useful targeting information, not a limitation.
Regional language artists are part of this. The report does not break India’s new superstars down by language in anything we could verify, so we will not invent a split. But anyone who has watched Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Haryanvi music eat the charts over the last few years can guess this is not only a Hindi film story.
What The Report Does Not Tell Us
Chartmetric’s scores are proprietary. They blend streaming, social and other signals, and the company does not publish the full formula. That means the tiers are a useful industry yardstick, not a neutral census. The data also measures reach and momentum, not money. More Indian superstars on a dashboard does not automatically mean more royalties in Indian artists’ bank accounts, especially in a market where per stream payouts are low and ad supported listening dominates.
Bengaluru Baath Take
The US and UK still own the biggest single slices of the global superstar pie, but the pie is being baked in a lot more kitchens now, and India is one of the busiest. The fun contradiction is the real headline: Indian music is on more foreign charts than ever while Indian fans are hugging their favourites closer to home. For labels, that is a signal to build export corridors on purpose rather than hoping for a viral accident. For everyone else, it is proof that the next “global” star might already be huge in Hubballi before anyone in Hollywood has heard the name.
Sources
- Music Business Worldwide: US and UK share of world’s superstar artists has fallen from 55.7% to 40.7% since 2021
- Chartmetric, How Music Charts: The new sound of global music
- Digital Music News: Chartmetric global music market report
- Music Ally: India is adding more superstar artists on Chartmetric than any other country
- Dork: Chartmetric data shows US and UK superstar artist share falls
