Saregama is making AI music videos for 1960s film songs it never owned the visuals to, at about $740 each
Saregama owns thousands of Indian film songs from the 1960s and 1970s. It owns the recordings. It owns the compositions. It never owned the videos, because when those films were made nobody thought the clips were worth selling separately.
India’s oldest record label, founded around 1901, is now using generative AI to build the videos it never had.
What Vikram Mehra told investors on the August 4 earnings call
Speaking on Saregama’s fiscal first-quarter call on Tuesday, August 4, Managing Director Vikram Mehra said the label holds “all the rights connected to the song, except the right of the original music video”.
Those visuals stayed inside the film negatives controlled by the movies’ owners. They were “not sold to the music labels because there was no market for it” at the time, Mehra said.
He called it one of the weaknesses in Saregama’s older catalog, and a gap no rival carries, “because everybody else is a more modern time music label”.
Shooting new videos was never economical. AI changed the arithmetic.
A music video made with AI can be INR 70,000 also.
That is around $740, as Music Business Worldwide reported, and Mehra said the results are “very true to real”. Saregama’s flagship YouTube channel, Saregama Music, carries roughly 64 million subscribers, so the distribution for those clips already exists.
How Saregama splits the plan between Gen X and Gen Z
The catalog refresh runs two ways.
For Gen X, Saregama keeps the original audio and gives it “more contemporary looking videos”. The song a listener remembers stays exactly as it was.
For Gen Z, the label goes further. It would “modify the audio a bit”, Mehra said, with a “change in the instrumentation while maintaining the composition”, then attach a new video.
There is a second AI strand that has nothing to do with video. Saregama’s content team is “using third-party GenAI tools to create neighboring audio content like podcast using Saregama’s songs”. Mehra described a podcast built around a 50-year-old reminiscing, scored with catalog songs about romance, separation and friendship. Saregama would then license that format to third-party podcast companies.
Predictive AI has been picking Saregama’s acquisitions for 4 years
Mehra drew a line between the generative AI now being tested and the predictive AI the company already runs.
The predictive models have been working for 4 years and choose which music Saregama buys. He claimed the resulting hit-to-flop ratio is better than any competitor in the market. Those models steer a content-acquisition budget the company put at INR 300 crore to INR 350 crore.
Generative AI, by contrast, is the newer bet. Mehra called it the real change in the room right now.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Saregama own the audio but not the video for its 1960s film songs?
The songs came from Indian films, and Saregama acquired the recording and composition rights. The visuals stayed locked inside the film negatives controlled by the movies' owners. Managing Director Vikram Mehra said the videos were never sold to music labels because no market for them existed at the time.
How much does Saregama say an AI-generated music video costs?
Vikram Mehra said a music video made with AI can be produced for as little as INR 70,000, roughly $740. He described the output as very true to real, and said that price is what makes filling the catalog's video gap financially sensible for the first time.
What is Saregama doing differently for Gen X and Gen Z listeners?
For Gen X, Saregama keeps the original audio and attaches a more contemporary-looking video. For Gen Z, it modifies the audio, changing the instrumentation while keeping the composition intact, and pairs that with a new video.
How long has Saregama been using predictive AI to choose which music to buy?
Four years, according to Vikram Mehra. He said the predictive models give Saregama a hit-to-flop ratio better than any competitor in the market, and they feed a content-acquisition budget the company put at INR 300 crore to INR 350 crore.
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Covering AI music tools, industry shifts, and news for music creators and professionals. Twice-weekly newsletter at aimusicpreneur.com.
