In September this year, a video of Ranu Mondal—an impoverished woman singing at the Ranaghat station in West Bengal—went viral. A month later she recorded a song for Bollywood music director Himesh Reshammiya. It garnered nearly 30 million views online. Mondal's instant success succinctly illustrates the changes sweeping through India's music industry, as a confluence of deeper smartphone penetration, hectic streaming activity, an emerging non-film independent scene and a wider acceptance of regional talent breaks Bollywood's established hegemony and sets the music industry on a path to hyper-growth.

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