iWorld
Zee Music Company signs South Indian films to expand pan-India music catalogue
From Dulquer Salmaan to Chiranjeevi to Yash, the label is buying up regional soundtracks at a pace that suggests it wants to own every language India sings in
MUMBAI: Music labels in India have traditionally picked a lane and stayed in it. Zee Music Company appears to have decided lanes are for lesser ambitions. The label, long dominant in Hindi film and independent music, is now on an acquisition spree across Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada cinema, and the sheer breadth of the slate suggests this is not a toe dipped cautiously into southern waters but a full-body plunge.
The trigger was Balan: The Boy, the Malayalam film directed by Chidambaram with music by Sushin Shyam, whose critical and commercial success gave Zee Music Company the proof of concept it needed. What follows is not a single follow-up deal but an avalanche of them. The marquee signing is I’m Game, the Malayalam thriller starring Dulquer Salmaan alongside Samyuktha Viswanathan, Mysskin, Kathir, Antony Varghese and Parth Tiwari, directed by Nahas Hidayath with music by Jakes Bejoy, one of the composers currently commanding the most heat in South Indian cinema. Pairing a bankable star with a red-hot composer is not a passive acquisition. It is a statement of intent.
The Telugu portfolio alone reads like a who’s who of the industry: Vikramarka, Pallaburusu, Happy Journey and Mega 158, the last featuring megastar Chiranjeevi with music by Thaman S, alongside NBK 111 starring Nandamuri Balakrishna, Kajal Aggarwal, Nayanthara and Sanjay Dutt, again scored by Thaman S, whose ubiquity across this slate is itself telling. Add Kanaka Durga and VenkyAnil5, the latter starring Venkatesh, Kalyan Ram, Keerthy Suresh and Krithi Shetty under Anil Ravipudi’s direction with music by G.V. Prakash Kumar, and the pattern becomes clear. Zee Music Company is not cherry-picking one or two prestige projects. It is buying volume, and betting that volume across a maturing regional box office beats concentration in a single market.
Kannada and Tamil get their due too, with Birbal: Case 2, Vibhrama and Mangala Gowri on the Kannada side, and Slumdog: 33 Temple Road, starring Vijay Sethupathi and Tabu with music by Harshavardhan Rameshwar, on the Tamil side. But the cleverest deal in the lot may be Toxic, featuring rocking star Yash, acquired simultaneously across Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. A single soundtrack, five language markets, one deal. That is not just expansion. That is efficient expansion, and efficiency is precisely what separates a label building a durable pan-India catalogue from one merely chasing headlines.
The label is also reaching beyond film soundtracks into original content, partnering with ZEE5 Malayalam’s Kerala Underground, an upcoming hip-hop reality show, and releasing its promotional anthem featuring Dabzee, The Imbachi, MC Couper and Parimal Shais. This matters more than it might first appear. Film music has a shelf life dictated by box office cycles. A homegrown hip-hop property gives Zee Music Company a foothold in youth culture that regenerates on its own terms, independent of any single film’s fortunes.
Sujal Parekh, chief business officer, Zee Music Company, described the I’m Game deal as part of the label’s pan-India growth journey, and the phrase, however corporate, is doing real work. With a catalogue already spanning Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Punjabi, Gujarati and devotional music, and releases lined up through 2026 and into 2027, the label is positioning itself less as a Bollywood-first player with regional add-ons and more as a genuine national music infrastructure. Given how decisively southern cinema has been driving India’s biggest box office and streaming numbers in recent years, that repositioning looks less like ambition and more like common sense.
