Saregama uses AI to make videos for songs in its catalog

Saregama, India's oldest record label, is using generative AI to build music videos for catalog songs that never had one, Music Business Worldwide reported August 5, drawing on the company's fiscal first-quarter earnings call. Managing Director Vikram Mehra said the label owns the recording and composition rights to older film songs but never owned the original video, since visuals were never sold to labels when many of the films were made.

Founded around 1901, Saregama's YouTube channel, Saregama Music, has about 64 million subscribers, and its catalog runs to roughly 180,000 songs, growing by about 5,000 releases a year. Mehra called the missing videos one of the "weaknesses" of the label's older catalog, since shooting new videos for old songs was never economical, but he said AI can now make a video that looks "very true to real" for around 70,000 rupees, about $740.

The plan targets two audiences at once. For older listeners, Saregama would keep the original audio and pair it with a more contemporary-looking video; for younger listeners, it would adjust the instrumentation while keeping the composition, and attach a new video. The label is also using AI to build podcast-style spoken word content around its songs, and separately uses predictive AI to help choose which music to acquire.

The push comes as Saregama keeps fighting what it calls "unlicensed exploitation" of its music by outside AI systems, even as it leans on generative tools itself. It lands the same week a federal court declined to dismiss independent artists' copyright case against AI firm Udio, and as Universal Music asked a different court to dismiss a musicians' union suit over its own AI licensing deal.