Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Saregama India Limited Earnings Conference Call, hosted by Emkay Global Financial Services Limited . As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on a touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Pranav Kshatriya from Emkay Global Financial Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity. We have with us today Mr. Vikram Mehra, Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, CFO, Mr. Anand Kumar, Group Head, Investor Relations, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, Executive Director, Investor Relations. I shall now hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks. Over to you, gentlemen.
Thank you, and a very good afternoon to all of you guys. The quarter two financial year 2026 saw our operating revenue at INR 230 crore and PBT of INR 60 crore. While all segments of our business grew, the video segment had seen a degrowth in this particular quarter, which is nothing but a cyclical issue. I have repeatedly said this, and I'll continue saying this: please always evaluate us on a rolling 12-month basis. Releases keep on moving from one quarter to another quarter. It becomes very difficult to evaluate us on just one quarter basis. Yes, last year, quarter two had multiple releases, while this year, this quarter had less releases. We may have more releases coming right now in Q3 and Q4. Let me start, as always, with the first vertical, which is music.
The quarter saw the release of a successful Tamil album called Idhilikkadai, which is a Dhanush movie, a Bengali album called Dhumketu , in which one of the songs right now sung by Arijit has done extremely well, and a Malayalam film album called Sahasam, which again has given a very big hit during the quarter. On the non-film side, Bhatia's song Kokaina, Haneeth Singh's song MASHOOQA, and a Marathi song, Chal Thuru Thuru Fair, did very well for us. Our new content strategic partnership with the ex-promoters of Nav Haryaanvi is going very strong. Many of the songs that we have sourced through them are hitting the local charts. We are proud of this relationship because not only have we bought the old catalog from Nav, we actually partnered with the owners and the management team there to strengthen our hands in the Haryaanvi market.
Now we are in a unique position whereby we are able to work with these people as our extended arm in the market, harnessing the strength of their relationships in the local market. It is also giving us a great model to go and work with other regional labels in the future along the same lines. Overall, the company released 1,500 originals and premium recreations across all the major languages of the country: Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bengali. Overall, our spend for new music content this year will be in the range of INR 320 crore-INR 330 crore. Yes, this has come down from what we were projecting earlier because many of the planned film albums, which were planned for the year, have got pushed to a later year.
Some of them, like our biggest album that was planned for the year, was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Love and War, which was supposed to release in quarter four of this financial year, has now got pushed to quarter two of the next financial year. It's part and parcel of our business, this happens. It has implications on both sides. It has reduced the amount of content outlay from our side for the year, but also has implications on the revenue projections, and we'll talk about it. Within the year, many of the releases that were earlier planned for Q1 or Q2 have got pushed to Q3, Q4. The upcoming releases include Ranveer Singh's Dhurandhar, the first song of which was released in Q2. I understand it very, very well for us, but the rest of the album is going to start getting released from this month onwards.
Dharma's next film with Kartik Aaryan called Main Tera Tu Meri Tu Meri Main Tera . That album is going to start hitting the market by the end of November. Nani's very, very big release in Telugu called Paradise. Kannada superstar Darshan's movie Devil. Tamil very big star called Sivakarthikeyan Parasakthi . These are some of the big film albums that should be hitting here in Q3 and Q4. Now I want to share something else also with you guys. We have created a new cell which actually resides within our video team, but that cell is helping us create latest music videos for the older songs that Saregama owns using the generative AI video generation tools. As I'm sure all of you guys will know, Saregama doesn't own the video rights of the songs that were released in the 20th century. We only have the audio rights.
To capitalize on the demand for these songs on YouTube, we always have been contemplating the idea of generating brand new videos, but costs have always become a prohibitive issue for us. Now, with generative AI, we finally have found a very effective tool which can help us not only create content, but create it at a much shorter time window and at a much lower cost structure. Let me give you an example of the award. Earlier, it used to take us 10-12 days to go back and create an old song version. Now we can go and complete it within two to three days with generative AI. The speed at which GenAI is developing, these are all third-party licensed tools. We never worked with anything which is unlicensed.
With the way GenAI is moving, I think we should be in a position to start being able to create videos for time frames right now, which are as small as 24 hours. As we go forward, we plan to experiment with mixing real actor shots via AI-generated backgrounds and elements to make it look even more real. Currently, there are two different areas. One is pure videos which are made right now with real actors, and everything is shot in real world. Then there are videos that we people are creating only using generative AI. We are also now experimenting: can we go back and mix the two, which will still have a much lower cost structure and faster time frame.
More important than that, we can go back and create videos that look and feel that much more interesting, which otherwise would have remained in the realm of fantasy only. Our weakness of not having the older content videos may just become a strength because we may start associating these songs with brand new GenAI videos, which will allow us also to expose the older music of ours to the Gen Z. Whatever we do, whether in terms of new content, older content, every time we people go out and spend money, we maintain that we are with our guidance of a five-year payback period. After that, if it's a brand new song, you have another 55-75 years of returns. When we are making videos for the older songs, we keep that in mind that the returns cannot be five years.
They have to be much shorter. Typically, we work in a one-year time frame window of payback. This quarter was the third quarter having the impact of Airtel went closing for us. This entire impact will go away from our base sometime in quarter three. Our YouTube revenues are growing as per expectations. We are happy both with the number of views that we people are getting, the amount of the charge position that our songs end up gaining, and the kind of CPMs YouTube is able to go and garner and hedge past onto us. The other good news is that we have started seeing initial moves by both the big music streaming platforms to push subscription. If you follow the market, you realize there are multiple promotions that they have started running now.
They need to do far more, but at least the platforms have started moving in the direction of subscription. Remember, both the penetration of subscription and the RPUs in India are one of the lowest in the world. If the platforms start pushing it, there's a massive upside for all of us. Whenever subscription goes up for the platforms, they share around 50% of whatever they make with music labels, the content owners. All of us have a big upside coming in, hopefully, in the days to come. I wanted to also share that over these last two quarters, we have further strengthened our music team with lots of senior executives joining from other international music labels. All the key roles for music acquisition, marketing, and monetization are now headed by experienced veterans with relevant cross-industry experience. They come from music companies or advertising agencies.
This, combined with our investments in data analysis and AI, and artificial intelligence, the professional work culture that we uniquely bring to the table, and I think even more unique is the decentralized decision-making, I think is going to hold us in very good stead in the days to come, allowing us to get to the number one position and have a lion's share of the revenues of the industry once subscription takes off. Artist management, the new vertical under music monetization, where artists are made popular through our IP releases, and then we monetize these artists by booking them for live events, weddings, and brand endorsements, from which Saregama gets a share. During this quarter, 18 new artists got added to our total number of lists of artists managed by us now crosses 230.
Between these 230 artists, they have a 200 million follower and subscriber base on Instagram and YouTube. As our investment in new content, both on audio as well as video, keeps on going up, these artists are going to become bigger and bigger. With digital advertising growing at 14%-15% per annum, we believe both the content these artists are making and the artists themselves are going to be a large beneficiary of this increase in digital advertising spends. Remember, Gen Z is not watching television. They are not seeing those ads. Gen Z is on paid subscription very often on these services.
The only way if you want to go back and attack Gen Z is either you go to the publisher's content which Gen Z is following, or you go out there as an advertiser and push your advertising through the influencer or the artist that Gen Z seems to be following. We have a presence on all these sides. We are one of the largest publishers of content for Gen Z, as well as one of the biggest representatives of influencers that Gen Z follow. Music segment overall, which is licensing plus artist management, grew around 12% year-on-year basis. We believe that we should be able to end the year at 19%-20% by the end of financial year 2026.
I acknowledge that this is a marginal reduction in the projection that we were given last year, but the fact of life is too many releases of ours have got pushed through the next financial year, which may have an impact right now on the growth in revenue, but we are continental 19%-20%. This was a relatively quieter quarter for video. We had only one small Malayalam movie called Miraj that got released, also released through new series, one called [Bhaketi on Zee] and Yes [Ali Naukri] on our YouTube channel. In the days forward, we people are doubling up on our focus on one of the fastest-growing content segments for Gen Z called micro series. You will be seeing far more content coming from our side, leveraging on the growing consumer interest in micro dramas, micro series.
This is content which has got duration of anything between one to three minutes. It typically has episodes which can be varying from 10 episodes to some of the international content which even goes to 1,000 episodes. The duration of the content is more closer to one minute, in some cases three minutes too. On the live event side, Saregama partnered with Diljit Dosanjh on his latest Aura tour, which premiered in Kuala Lumpur and then went to Hong Kong. This is just a start of his new tour. We also did the second round of Disco Dancer musical show, this time in Dubai. With season coming in, there is big action planned in the next few months, both in India and abroad as far as live events are concerned. We also plan to launch our first music festival in Bangalore in March next year.
Our long-term belief in the potential of live events keeps getting reinforced every quarter, seeing the overall consumer involvement in the live events that are happening in the market. Currently, our focus has been artist-driven shows and some of our own IP-based music shows. In the days to come, we will increase our focus on stand-up comedy and the smaller concepts. Internally, we call it experiential. At Saregama, over time, we have built a massive strength in B2B revenue generation. What does that mean? B2B means licensing of our audio and video content to third-party platforms. We work with the likes of Spotify and SoundCloud and Netflix or radio stations for all these B2B deals where we license our content to them.
Karma was a first attempt, and now with live events, we are also trying to build a direct-to-customer vertical wherein we can go back and sell our products or services directly to the customer. The biggest advantage of that is that we end up generating first-party data as we go forward, which will end up owning direct customer relationships, which will help us go and cross-sell products to them in the days to come. That's the second vertical we people have started. We are now laying the foundation of a third vertical for generating revenue, which is brand sponsorships. We have created a brand new brand partnership vertical within the company that consolidates selling of all our business segments. So music, live events, and FilterCopy, all of them are now housed together from the brand sponsorship perspective. This team is headed by a media sales veteran.
In the last few months, we have partnered with national brands like Oppo, Unilever India, Britannia, Flipkart on the music space, P&G, ITC on live event space, Hyundai, LG, Samsung, Simpla on the short format. Up till now, what was happening is each of these verticals were going on their own and talking to the brands. As we go forward, everything will be consolidated under the same team. You will be seeing scenarios where we will be selling our entire suite of offerings to our brand. Rather than selling our brand only live, we will also end up selling the brand music, and the music brand, we will end up selling filter copy. We are uniquely placed to offer to our brand partners an ability for them to use us for creating content, whether in terms of music or video content that integrates their brand.
We can also provide them artists or influencers if they want those influencers to appear as part of the video content because we are the biggest digital influencer agency also. Uniquely, we can ensure that the content that has been created for the brand or the ad part that has been created from the brand can be disseminated using the 400 million digital footprint that Saregama brings to the table. No other company is able to offer all three: creation, artists, as well as distribution of content. TV channels, if you talk about it, only do distribution of content. Talent management agencies are able to help you only and only with providing you artists who need to appear in the content. Creative agencies are able to go out there and create content for you. We, with all the verticals of ours right now, which.
Are driving synergy from each other, will be able to offer this unique feature to a branch. I believe 12 months from now, this vertical should start contributing handsomely to the overall revenue and profit numbers of the company. Over the next few years, we will continue investing in new music content. This will contribute not only to the immediate growth but also future-proof our company and put us on a long-term growth path. We had projected growth rate of 30% at consolidated company level for revenue, excluding Carvaan, between financial year 2024 to financial year 2027, and we hold on to that number. We also maintain our annual adjusted EBITDA guidance of 32-33%.
Saregama's growth narrative will continue to be steady in medium to long term thanks to increase in digital consumption, both in terms of new customers joining the market and existing customers consuming more and more. With over 400 million internet footprint, cash reserves, professional managerial depth, and access to the soundtracks of the best movies. Our ability now to attract the best of the talent from the market, we will be able to guarantee earnings not just for the next two to three years, but hopefully for the next 20-30 years. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two .
Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital Markets Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. So just wanted to understand the current situation of the more newer platform, and then people are shifting from YouTube and other Spotify to Instagram Reel. They're spending more hours comparatively, they used to spend on YouTube and other platforms. Now, the shift of hours and shift of people more on the Instagram toward and how. I know we are getting some revenue from the Meta, but still, major chunk is coming from YouTube and Spotify. So just wanted to understand the technology and then revenue driver for us in a more clear way. Yeah. Sure, ma'am.
Let me try to answer this. One, if you can go out there and refer to the various third-party data, not related to Saregama but for the overall music industry in India. I'm happy to forward some of those findings, which tells us that the actual music consumption in India over the last decade has gone up. Over the last three years, data also we see right now is constantly rising. Unlike the older days. I'm 50+. When I was in my 30s and 40s, it was normal that there used to be a time where all of us used to listen to music because music was typically heard using a CD player or a cassette player, and it used to be loud.
Today, people consume music using their AirPods, which means that whether they are studying, going to the office, going to their colleges, they are in the gym, they are cooking. All the time, people are going out there and consuming music in the background. Music consumption, in fact, has gone up and not come down. The number of views that YouTube is generating for themselves from music or what Saregama is generating for itself right now from YouTube for its music or on Spotify, the streams, everything is going up. There is absolutely nothing to go back and indicate at this juncture, India and globally, that music consumption is coming down. What Instagram is ensuring here is that the number of hours that people like you, me, and children are spending on their devices overall is going up.
The time we used to spend with each other, with our friends, with our family, is being eaten by the time we people are giving on their devices. Instagram and YouTube Shorts are also growing, and Spotify and YouTube are also growing. Now, the second part of the question on the revenue model. Yes, the amount of revenues that we make from the short format apps is relatively small at this moment, but our deals with these companies are very, very clear that the day they start opening themselves to full-fledged advertising, they will do the same revenue-sharing arrangement with us that a YouTube or a Spotify does for their subscription or advertising. Whatever money they make, 50% of that is going to get shared with the content owners.
As much as we are bullish on audio streaming and video streaming, we also understand short format is a very big opportunity of revenue that may get opened for us right now in the next 12 to 24 months.
Sure, sir. So sir, our video and OTT segment revenues are a sad decline. That is a drop of around 39% this quarter. Could you walk us through what drove that and timing of release or seasonality or anything?
Timing of release right now. Unlike the music revenues, which typically work in an annuity in a fashion, the numbers do not fluctuate on a day-to-day basis unless a big deal is going out of the window. Video depends entirely on the fact whether a movie was released or a movie was not released, whether a series was sold, and which quarter was the series sold across our platform.
It is lumpy in nature. That is why if you have to go out there and evaluate our video revenue and profitability, I request you to do it on a 12-month basis, not on a quarter-on-quarter basis. When I am saying this, please go back and you can refer to my older statements. When our revenue goes up also on video, I say the same thing. I am not saying it only when the video revenues come down. Video is lumpy in nature. Please read it on a 12-month basis.
Sure. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Nitin Sharma from Seabrook Private Limited]. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Two questions. First of all, I want to understand the timeline towards seeing the OTT platform shifting towards the subscription-only models. Has that timeline changed or shifted further?
Where is it, if you can talk about. In a general sense?
I would have loved right now had I given you a firm timeline. Unfortunately, it's in the hands of my partners and not in our hands. As I said in my opening statement also, we are seeing movement happening. For the first time, we are seeing promotions being run and advertising communication being put out by these platforms to push for subscription. I'm also very buoyed by, if you see Spotify's latest results that have come out, they are showing very handsome growth now in the Latin American markets also. Those numbers are coming at a very high output too. I like to believe right now it's not if, it's a question of when India will end up replicating what's happening in a lifetime or before that happened in China.
Where subscription is going to go back and take off. We internally keep on doing various kinds of studies to understand what is the inclination of people or readiness of people to go back and pay for music content. We see under the age of 35, and I'm repeating, under the age of 35, a very high inclination of people who are ready to pay provided the paid subscription is put in a more affordable fashion. In an affordable fashion, it should be double-digit outputs and not a triple-digit monthly pricing. The issue only up to now is that streaming platforms have to just ensure that all the bells and whistles are not available as part of their free business, but they should be limited only as part of the paid business. They have just rolled it out in Latin America. They are seeing very positive results.
We like to believe that buoyed by that success, something similar may happen in India too. We are all prepared for that scenario, that subscription will take off. If you see subscription business anywhere in the world, it does not take off. It does not take off. When it takes off, it is a hockey stick. It moves at a very steep pace.
Understood. Related to this, just an overview of what is your understanding because you regularly speak to the OTT platforms. Is there a willingness to kind of bring down the subscription prices to double-digit, or do they still believe that it is the triple-digit, low triple-digit where they are comfortable and want to stick?
It is a combination of all three things which is going to help subscription to take off.
One, the free service cannot be as good as maybe it is today because if you're going to offer everything free, then even you and I will not pay for the paid subscription. So the free service, some changes have to be made by them. Subscription pricing has to be made more affordable, and there has to be enough amount of communication out to the customer. Wherein all music labels readily have offered that we will partner with them and ensure that promotions happen in a very big fashion. We will use our own digital footprint. Like I told you, Saregama controls 400 million digital footprint today. All of us will help these platforms for them to achieve a higher subscription penetration. Because in the end, it's going to help us also. You are asking for a timeline. I continue maintaining part right now that it's just a quarter's impact.
We are already seeing a growth on the paid subscription. Unfortunately, the base is very, very small. So even very high double-digit growth also doesn't move the needle to that extent. It's just a matter of time. It's a matter of a few quarters where something of this sort is going to be happening. There are only two free platforms that are left in the market. We believe something will change.
Understood. Thank you. Second question is more on the, if you can provide color on how was the festive season for the industry since third quarter tends to be the biggest contributor for the sector. Any color would be helpful.
Yeah. So festive, unlike the durable industry where you immediately start seeing the impact of Diwali coming in, we were very much governed by festive. Till that time, Carvaan was a very big part of our portfolio.
In the current scenario, Carvaan is a very small part of our portfolio. The festive season has an impact, but not that much. The impact is an indirect impact. Festive season ends up getting higher advertising on YouTube. Since we get a 55% share of all advertising revenue that comes on our content, we do get the benefit. Beyond that, festive season does not have that direct, a massive change that happens. Yes, YouTube will have an impact. It may so happen that closer to December, bigger films start getting released. That means bigger albums are going to come out. If those albums do well, then there will be an impact.
Understood. Thank you. Check out our presentation. I think that will be useful for you.
In the presentation, there is a slide which is showing how our music revenue, which is licensing plus artist management, keeps on moving quarter on quarter. That will give you some understanding of how much impact seasonality has.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harshit Toshniwal from Premji Investments. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, please. Yes, you're loud and clear. Please go ahead.
Sure. So congratulations for a decent set of numbers. One thing which is not particularly related to this quarter, but if, for example, I look at since 2021 to 2025, we give a very good disclosure in terms of the era-wise revenue which we have received. Now, over there, sir, the trend has been that if I look at the songs pre-2020.
Their revenue in absolute terms has been a bit stagnant at around INR 320 crore-INR 330 crore for the last three, four years. The growth we have seen in music licensing has actually come from the songs post-2020. My understanding was that probably in the post-2020 songs, since we are investing in a year, obviously the first-year revenue will be high. Is there any reason why the pre-2020 era songs, their revenue has been a bit more stagnant in the last three, four years? Probably because when I compare it with the industry, that segment is also seeing a decent growth for the industry. Sir, I'll not comment on the industry part. Let me talk about our content.
On an Apple-to-Apple comparison, that means if I take a platform like a YouTube or a Spotify or a SoundCloud and check the revenue of my pre-2020 content. Even pre-2000 content, we are seeing a steady revenue increase that is happening. Why you see this impact, I will not comment on the numbers that you arrived at of how much is catalog and how much is newer. Yes, on the overall basis, directionally, you're right. We have seen in last year or so some amount of impact. Please keep in mind the real reason for that is that three or four of the large free platforms that were very big earlier, they have all shut down. The total revenue that we are making from streaming business has not grown.
The fact is that, thankfully, there's no degrowth happening out here for us because newer content came in the picture. The fact that if four platforms go out of the market completely in a very short frame, in what last 18 months, it will have an impact. What I can assure you is we have got a senior-level person who has joined the team, and a full structure is being built under him, whose only role at this moment is to ensure the revenue from catalogs have to go up. Easier said than done. What needs to happen is that some of the catalog songs, we are seeing how recreations can be done. Second objective is how do I ensure those catalog songs become very, very big on platforms like Instagram and YouTube Shorts. We are also going out here and creating podcasts for many of these platforms.
The point that I referred earlier, we are using generative AI to go out there and create brand new videos for the older songs. All those coming in place. I'm ready to venture my neck out and tell you right now, next couple of years, we see a very steady growth coming on this base.
Got it. Got it. If I look at, obviously, just the last two, three years of data, it might be that there can be many one-offs that. Only—.
If you look at the last 18 months' data right now, yes, you will see the numbers not growing up that substantially on catalog. It is only because platforms are gone. If you go beyond before that right now, we were surprised with the growth that we people were seeing.
Those kinds of growth were running into 20% + on the catalog side because multiple new platforms were coming in at that particular time. On a like-to-like basis, I am repeating myself, platform to platform. Platform X, if they had catalog and the platform is still existing and is a free platform even today, you will see a revenue growth coming in.
Got it. Got it. Got it. Another question, if it is possible, was on the fact that it may not be relevant today, but I understand there is a 60-year timeline for the copyright of a particular song. If you can help us, in our industry, then how do we navigate?
Obviously, this might not be relevant till maybe 2030, 2040s, even for our older contents.
How does this typically work that at the end of the expiry, does it come for renewal and we have a first offer to bid, or how will that expiry time period work? See, in a public forum like this, the only thing I can share with you is as follows. Clarify the copyright rules for you. When we buy a song, there are two rights that come across to us. One is called the master right or the sound recording right. That is a right of the song. You are correct. The Copyright Act says that our ownership is there for 60 years from the release of the song. There is one more second right that also gets transferred across to us. It is called a publishing right. That is a right of the lyrics of the song and the rights of the tune of the song.
These are separate rights. According to the Indian Copyright Act, the lyrics rights stay with us for 60 years from the death of the artist who wrote the song. Composition rights, the tune rights, are valid with us for 60 years from the death of the composer. We still have a very, very long way to go for many of our superhit songs. Even if the song had the one right that would have come out there outside 60 years, the other rights are still sitting there with us only. Got it.
Got it. Got it. Sure. Perfect. This is great. Thanks a lot and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harsha from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. A few questions from my side.
Sorry, we can't hear you. Sorry to interrupt.
Sorry to interrupt. Harsha, actually, you're sounding a little muffled.
Yeah. Is it better?
Yes, it is better.
Yeah. Yeah. Firstly, if we could, in terms of giving better comfort to the entire investment community, if we could kind of directionally give a ballpark range in terms of how much our, say, YouTube revenue, say, in FY 2024 and 2025 has grown and the period before that, say, between 2022 and 2023. Why I'm asking this is that I understand that there were challenges in terms of the consolidation of the industry on OTT platform. Are there any issues that we are facing on an industry level as well on YouTube, or how is it? I mean, some color on YouTube would be very helpful, please.
See, I'm not going to get into one particular partner.
If you just track our performance and our numbers are there with you, we have been growing our music revenue at a 23% CAGR over the last, I think, six or seven years now. Which is a combination of, you can't have one vertical completely sitting down and still be managing 23% growth. It's a combination of the growth that we people have seen on video OTT platforms like YouTube and, say, Facebook, audio OTT platforms like Spotify and Gaana and Apple Music and Amazon, short format apps like Insta Reels or YouTube Shorts here, and some of the work that we have done on the publishing side. Overall, all parts, on a combined basis, have grown at 23%. I'm still this year because a couple of our very big titles have all got pushed. I'm getting the projection down to 19%-20%.
On a mid to long term, we are maintaining our stand that we should be able to grow music business at 23%.
Got it. I understand that. Is it safe to assume that our YouTube revenue would be growing, say, in the range of 10%-15%?
Let's put it this way. See, you're asking me a specific thing on a partner which I can't disclose. I'm not at a liberty to disclose. Please understand, for most people, YouTube is one of the largest partners for them. If YouTube does not grow at a healthy enough rate, how am I going to go back and live up to my 23% CAGR promise over mid to long term or even a 19%-20% number this year? YouTube has to grow.
I said it in the opening statement also, we are very happy with the growth we have seen on the YouTube side.
Okay. Got it. Got it. Secondly, any qualitative color you can give in terms of the consumption behavior on Spotify. Especially. Post them announcing—
Sorry to interrupt, Harsha.
Yeah. Actually, your voice is again cracking.
Is it better now?
No, it is cracking. Yes. Could you speak again?
Yeah. Is this better?
Yes. It is loud and clear now. Thank you.
Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Any qualitative color you can give in terms of the consumption behavior on Spotify post them announcing price increase in the Indian market that actually happened at the end of August. End of August or first week of September. I understand that the data sample would be smaller, but just trying to understand the initial signs.
See, again, you're asking me for a particular partner information. Please understand, I'm not at a liberty to discuss specific partner part. Overall, subscription, we are seeing movement happening in the country. What I can tell you right now is younger people who seem to be taking subscription for streaming apps far more frequently or far more easily than the older people. People who are 50 + still believe right now that why should they pay for something digital. People, the younger generation, Gen Z and millennials, people up to the age of 40 think it's an absolutely okay thing to do to go out there and pay for a digital subscription. The advantage of that is going to flow both through music and video platforms. I have every reason to believe that.
All these audio streaming platforms have a large growth curve sitting in front of them. By implication, we will end up riding on the same curve.
Okay. Got it. One more thing, just a clarification on Pocket Aces. The revenue is kind of, forms part of artist management completely, or is there something that flows to the video segment as well?
Yeah. It flows both on the artist side as well as the video side.
Any split you have?
No.
Okay. Lastly, do you retain the earlier guidance on Pocket Aces being break-even in FY 2026?
Yes. We maintain that.
Sure. Okay. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.
My question is regarding your guidance of 19-20% growth this year in the music business. Now, just wanted to understand, is this music licensing only, or does it include artist management also?
For us, music always means licensing plus artist management because it's the same artists with whom I'm creating music. It's always combined guidance from our side.
Got it. Given that, this number has been tracking around 12% in the first half. How do we see this guidance getting achieved in the second half? I mean, are we expecting a significant jump in your revenues in 3Q or 4Q? I mean, is that how we should look at it?
Yes. See, in our case, things like YouTube revenues are completely dependent on new music releases. They jump there, and you immediately see an impact on it.
You do not see an impact on audio streaming platforms with immediate effect. They typically trail with some kind of a lag. YouTube sees an implication immediately. All our movies that were planned for Q1 and Q2 across languages except Thug Life, everything has got pushed to Q3 and Q4. On that basis, we see the revenues going up substantially. Yes, the fact that some of the movies have got pushed across now to next year, because of which there is some dent on what I believe music will be able to achieve. Nineteen to twenty looks an achievable number. Will it be a lumpy Q4? We are already one month into the quarter. Will it be safe to say that we will have a— I have already given you enough color on this.
By the time we end the year, you should see those kind of numbers. At this juncture, we are fairly confident we should be able to go and touch those numbers.
The second question is on your artist management vertical within your music space. Just to help us understand, how big is this opportunity? Or how big this opportunity do you expect it to become, let's say, two, three years down the line in terms of revenue or time perspective? What kind of steady-state margins should we be expecting from this business?
Currently, I think we are trending around single-digit margins, but— Again, both artist management and the music part are completely interlinked with each other.
An artist like Mahi, whom we people are promoting, or some of the bigger names like Kumar Vishwas, some of their stuff is sitting in artist management while they create the content which may be sitting on music. When you are looking at margin analysis also, please look at both these things combined. Please do not look at things separately. The way we look at it is, why did we get into artist management? Whenever we were creating music, we realized that we are making songs. Because of songs, the artist is becoming big. When the artist becomes big, we do not get any upside because of the artist becoming big. Artist goes out there, starts singing in corporate functions and weddings, and ends up making a large amount of revenue. Hence, we re-looked at this model, saw what some of the global.
Peers of ours were doing. All of them had a very strong talent management arm, and they were making money from the talent also. Hence, we just followed what Universal, Sony, Warner do globally, is that also invest in the artist so that if the songs on a repeated basis keep on becoming bigger, then we have also an upside on the revenues that the artists may be making from non-Saregama sources. That was our thought process behind artist management. Seems to be going steady at this moment. We believe there's a large potential for this to go up. The potential for this to go up right now comes only from two sides, primarily. Booking for live events, that live events can be ticketed shows, corporate functions, or weddings, weddings being the biggest one.
Brands are now increasingly, we are realizing, brands are moving out of these Bollywood and cricket-only and also want to go out there and talk to the next level of stars, which is primarily the kind of talent we people are representing. Because this talent is more relatable to their fan base, every time any of these artists does a brand endorsement, we get a share of that too. That is the thought process. When you are looking at the margins, please see both these things together.
Okay. From an opportunity perspective, how big do you see this business becoming, let's say—
Tough call on. In the presentation that we people have gone out and floated, this number. Our guidance to this is we will grow this combination on a mid to long-term basis at a 23% CAGR.
Does it have the potential to become far bigger than that? Yes. At this moment, as I talk to you, I maintain my 23% number only and not going more bullish than that. If you see any of the independent reports, that will tell you that talent management part is growing very, very steeply, not just in India, globally too.
Got it. Just a related question to that, can you suggest who would be the peers in this talent management space?
Who would be big enough to talk about or for us to understand this space better?
All of the unlisted companies, there is no listed company there. Any names you can call out?
I'm happy to not—this is Saregama part right now, so I don't want to go there, but I'll be happy to share that information separately with you.
We have clear benchmarks right now with who we are working. These are all unlisted entities. The good or the very good part is all of those guys are just plain talent management companies. They do not have an opportunity to go back and create their own content and give their own talent a chance to become bigger. What places Saregama unique? In that sense, there is no competition we have. We are unique because not only are we representing talent, but we are also very big on the music and the video side so that talent can get plugged in in each of these places.
Talent likes it because talent says, "You are genuinely helping me become bigger." The rest of the people are just managing their talent and going to third-party companies and saying, "Can you please plug in my talent in your content?" We have our own content piece going on. Every time a music video is getting generated here, you will 9 out of 10 times see our own talent working in it.
Got it. Thanks a lot for those answers. All the best. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ravi Naredi from Naredi Investments. Please go ahead.
Yes, Naredi. How are you?
Very good, sir. [Foreign language] . It is not so energetic result, but segment revenue, video shown, major downfall. What are reasons?
Sir, [Foreign language] , it's as simple as video revenues are always lumpy in nature. It depends on which quarter a series has been released or a film has been released. Last year, Q2, there were two very big releases. The biggest series we've ever done got released in Q2 last year. If you start seeing the numbers right now on a steady-sloth basis, then you are not going to be seeing this kind of an impact coming in, if I read my numbers correctly right now. You will, on the video segment, always see this kind of a lumpy nature. I believe right now, by the time we'll end the year, we will again be on a stable basis. Unlike the music business, which keeps on growing on a steady basis because Gaana to Spotify or YouTube are all chosen out there.
Movies and series, you prepare for a period of few quarters, and then you release it, and the quarter that it gets released is where the revenue gets booked.
Right. Right. Sir, this video we are doing since last seven years, I think. So ultimately, can you tell what is our gain or profit or loss in seven years? [Foreign language] . [Foreign language] ends up ensuring to me that I have a very decent grip on my music side because all the movies that we are producing, we end up getting the music at a much lower price because [Foreign language] . That's what my competitors also do.
On the short-format side, which is the work we work with Pocket Aces, the fact we are in video business keeps the marketing of music at a lower cost. Also, all the talent management part that I'm doing, talent comes to us because they have a chance to get plugged in into our videos. What I assure you is that the total amount of capital that will ever go on the video side is not going to be big. I think we have made. Given the guidance that at any particular time, total capital invested in video and live will not exceed more than 18% of the capital employed. We are far lower than that. Also, I'm assuring you that we will never get into the large budget movie. [Foreign language] . We don't have it in our DNA.
If we have to do it, we might as well partner with somebody else. Within Saregama, we are comfortable. If we have to do something right now, working on the smaller budget stuff, where the highs and lows are very, very little and very little capital gets employed.
Sir, second question, want to know, in this way, acquisition cost of music rights, is it usual or is it a very higher side?
Sir, we are maintaining a five-year payback period, let me put it this way.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All the best.
[Foreign language] languages [Foreign language] . There's one South Indian language where it was low, suddenly went up very high, has now fallen down once again. [Foreign language] recovery [Foreign language] , then producer increases the cost.
[Foreign language] numbers [Foreign language] , ROI [Foreign language] , we all start coming down. [Foreign language] Saregama [Foreign language] payback [Foreign language] bonus [Foreign language] all of us are completely anal about it is [Foreign language] payback period [Foreign language]
how is going this music industry on paid basis? According to you, in how many years it will be 100% paid basis?
सर, paid basis, [Foreign language] that. Good part is there are only two guys who are left on the free side. And they are also making all the right noises, Spotify and JioSaavn. JioSaavn has in fact made a lot of positive moves in this space. Spotify is very encouraged with what they have done in the Latin American market.
They just declared the results. They went and started pushing for paid in Latin America. As [Foreign language] , Latin American market is very similar to our market. It's not that the disposable incomes are that much higher there. And Spotify is seeing a massive growth in the revenue from those markets. China has already gone through the same cycle. It's a matter of the timing. [Foreign language] quarter [Foreign language] quarter [Foreign language] quarter [Foreign language] . Wish I had the form answer for you. We believe in it strongly. We are continuing to invest in newer content, especially in languages where we believe that the paid subscribers [Foreign language] markets [Foreign language] markets [Foreign language] subscription [Foreign language] focus [Foreign language], acquisition [Foreign language] focus [Foreign language] .
I continue to be bullish on this space.
Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
No, I have nothing else to add except the fact that there are quarters where some segment goes up and other segment goes down. I think overall, we people are on very, very firm ground. We have a good feeling that in next two to three quarters, almost all the decisions that we people are taking will start bearing fruit. We continue with the guidance that we people have given that the music will be growing at a mid to long-term basis on a 23%. The adjusted EBITDA guidance of ours remains at 32%-33%.
We should be able to grow consolidated revenue of the company, excluding Carvaan, between FY2024 to FY2027 at 30%. Keep supporting us. Look forward to your blessings. Thank you.
On behalf of Emkay Global Financial Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.