Anuv Jain has six songs on Spotify's Indie India playlist this morning, more than any other artist on it, and the newest of the six came out more than two years ago. At our snapshot at 3:25 AM IST on 17 October 2026, the Ludhiana singer-songwriter held No. 34 with Jo Tum Mere Ho, No. 40 with Baarishein, No. 46 with Husn, and Nos. 70, 71 and 74 with Gul, Alag Aasmaan and Mazaak. Every one of those six recordings carries the same line on Spotify: ℗ Anuv Jain.

I went in expecting to write about a hit-maker. I came out thinking more about a catalogue, and about the odd, slow way he has built it. This is a profile of Anuv Jain as he stands in October 2026, twelve days after BBC Newsbeat published an interview in which he said his new songs are "done" and could arrive this year.

Anuv Jain at a glance

  • Artist: Anuv Jain, singer-songwriter from Ludhiana, Punjab (BBC Newsbeat, October 2026; Rolling Stone India, April 2024); sings mainly in Hindi; on Instagram as @anuvjain
  • Spotify: 20,616,159 monthly listeners at about 3:30 AM IST, 17 October 2026
  • On Indie India at 3:25 AM IST, 17 October 2026: Jo Tum Mere Ho (No. 34), Baarishein (No. 40), Husn (No. 46), Gul (No. 70), Alag Aasmaan (No. 71), Mazaak (No. 74); not on RADAR India
  • Release dates on Spotify: Baarishein 12 January 2018; Alag Aasmaan 31 July 2020; Gul 16 July 2021; Mazaak 16 September 2022; Husn 1 December 2023; Jo Tum Mere Ho 2 August 2024; all six ℗ Anuv Jain
  • Latest single: Inaam, 12 December 2025, ℗ 2025 Anuv Jain
  • Collaborations: Afsos with AP Dhillon (2025); Arz Kiya Hai for Coke Studio Bharat (2025)

Six songs and a lot of patience

Add up the play counts Spotify showed for those six tracks at about 3:30 AM IST and you get roughly 2.32 billion: 647,545,051 for Jo Tum Mere Ho, 535,815,742 for Husn, 519,331,500 for Baarishein, 290,593,014 for Alag Aasmaan, 238,591,393 for Gul and 90,430,727 for Mazaak. Those are film-song numbers. These are mostly quiet voice-and-guitar recordings, released under his own name.

He has been plain about that. "Everything that I do comes out of my own pocket, there is no external person," he told Rolling Stone India's Divyansha Dongre in October 2022, around the release of Mazaak. In the same interview he said a single takes "at least four months" with the video, cover art and master, and then "people decide its fate in four minutes."

What strikes me about the playlist is what is missing from it. Inaam, his most recent single, showed 44,452,205 Spotify plays this morning, a fraction of the older songs, and it is not on Indie India. Neither of his 2025 collaborations is there either. Today the list is made of songs he wrote and put out alone, some of them eight years old. I find that both reassuring and a little sad. Reassuring, because good songs are still reaching new people years after release. Sad, because it suggests the audience that made him keeps asking for the same few songs.

What the records sound like, preview by preview

My listening notes here come from Apple Music's 30-second previews of all seven songs, which I went through in release order and also measured. A preview is a short slice of a track, so take what follows as an impression, not a full review.

Baarishein, from 2018, is almost bare. Less than 2 percent of its preview's energy sits below 120 Hz, the range where bass lives. That matches his own account. He told Rolling Stone India's Peony Hirwani in April 2024 that he wrote the song at 16 and recorded it at 21, and that the result is "quite minimal, with just a shaker and keys, as that's all I had access to," because as "a broke college student" he could not pay for more. "I recorded the song for free, which turned out to be the best investment I ever made," he said.

Then the records slowly grow a floor. The share of low end in the previews climbs to about 5 percent on Alag Aasmaan, 11 on Gul, 25 on Mazaak, 30 on Husn and close to half on Jo Tum Mere Ho. In practice Jo Tum Mere Ho sits warm and heavy underneath in a way Baarishein never does, while the voice on top stays as soft and close as it always was. Husn's preview does the one dramatic thing in the set: about fifteen seconds in, the level jumps by roughly four to five decibels and the song opens up. Inaam does something similar at almost the same point.

So the songs have not changed much, but the frame around them has, and I think that is the right call. His voice is not a big instrument and the writing depends on you leaning in; a fuller bottom end lets the songs sit beside everything else on a playlist without touching what made them work.

They are also longer than the playlist around them. The median track on Indie India this morning runs 3:17. All six of his are longer, from Baarishein at 3:27 to Jo Tum Mere Ho at 4:11. We have looked at why Indian indie songs keep getting shorter, and Anuv Jain is one of the clearest exceptions. He takes his time getting to the line you came for, and I like him for it.

One song a year, and what it costs

For most of his career he has released very little. He told BBC Newsbeat he is "very selective" and was putting out one song a year until recently. Back in 2024 he told Rolling Stone India that burnout was what worried him about the scene: "I come from the belief that overexposure isn't beneficial, but unfortunately, it seems to be the norm dictated by algorithms."

I respect that, and I also think it has a price. When you release one song a year, each new one has to compete with every old one, and the old ones keep winning. The 2025 collaborations look like his attempt to push against that. Speaking to Rolling Stone India's Anurag Tagat in August 2025 about Arz Kiya Hai, he said he wanted "to just experiment this year a little bit more and just see if I can give people something a little different from what I usually do."

The roughest moment of the past year came from a similar step outside his usual setting. On 30 November 2025, at Jacob Collier's show at the Nesco Centre in Mumbai, Collier invited him on stage to sing Baarishein with Collier at the piano. Clips spread online, and Hindustan Times and India Today both reported Vishal Dadlani's comment calling it "embarrassing." India Today noted on 9 December that Jain had not responded publicly. I have only seen the clips, so I will not judge the night. What I will say is that this is a song written to sound like a private conversation, and a packed hall on someone else's night was always going to be a hard place for it.

Who owns Anuv Jain's songs

For a publication that tracks independence, this matters most. On Spotify, every one of the six Indie India tracks, and Inaam, carries ℗ Anuv Jain. His other recent releases are different. Afsos is ℗ 2025 Anuv Jain, AP DHILLON INC/Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, and Arz Kiya Hai is ℗ 2025 Universal Music India as a Coke Studio Bharat release. Apple Music also lists a 2024 version of Baarishein as ℗ 2024 EarthPercent, under licence from Anuv Jain. The songs he wrote and released alone remain his; the collaborations sit under other companies' names.

"We release music ourselves and hope for the best," he told BBC Newsbeat. Our analysis of who owns Indian indie music masters found that most masters on Rock in India and Fresh Finds India belong to the artists, and he is the biggest example of that pattern I know of. For artists wondering whether that route can work, our guide to releasing music without a record label covers the practical side, and our piece on Spotify's role as a gatekeeper for Indian indie explains why a playlist like Indie India carries so much weight.

The Local Train, another Indie India regular, have three songs on it this morning. Anuv Jain has six, without a band, a film or, for the songs in question, a label. Our wider look at India's independent music scene in 2026 argued that the challenge is no longer just making music but building a career around it. He has done that, slowly.

Where he goes next

Dastakhat is his first world tour, and Rolling Stone India reported that he framed it as the end of a trilogy that began with the Dastakein tour in 2021 and Guldasta in 2023. It reached London's Roundhouse on 30 September, where BBC Newsbeat interviewed him. His Spotify page this morning lists two more dates: Chennai on 31 October at EVP Film City, with Sublahshini, and Dubai on 20 November at Expo City.

As for the new songs, he told the BBC: "They're done and I think they're beautiful songs so technically you might have more music this year." That leaves about ten weeks. I would like the next one to be a little rougher, closer to Baarishein than to Jo Tum Mere Ho, though six songs on Indie India suggest his listeners may not agree with me.

FAQ

Who is Anuv Jain?

Anuv Jain is an Indian singer-songwriter from Ludhiana who sings mainly in Hindi, often with just an acoustic guitar or ukulele. His best-known songs include Baarishein, Alag Aasmaan, Gul, Husn and Jo Tum Mere Ho. He had 20,616,159 monthly Spotify listeners on 17 October 2026.

Where is Anuv Jain from?

He is from Ludhiana in Punjab, according to BBC Newsbeat (October 2026) and Rolling Stone India (April 2024). He told Rolling Stone India he worked in his family's business in Ludhiana for three years before turning to music full time around the COVID-19 lockdown.

What are Anuv Jain's most popular songs?

On his Spotify page on 17 October 2026, the most-played were Jo Tum Mere Ho (647,545,051 plays), Husn (535,815,742), Baarishein (519,331,500), Arz Kiya Hai (379,234,190) and Afsos with AP Dhillon (277,243,881).

Is Anuv Jain an independent artist?

His solo singles, including all six songs on Indie India and his latest single Inaam, carry the line ℗ Anuv Jain on Spotify. His collaborations Afsos (with AP Dhillon and Republic Records) and Arz Kiya Hai (Coke Studio Bharat, ℗ Universal Music India) are owned or co-owned by other companies.

Is Anuv Jain on tour?

Yes. His Dastakhat World Tour began in New Delhi on 16 January 2026. On 17 October 2026, his Spotify page listed shows in Chennai on 31 October and Dubai on 20 November.

Sources

Cover: Anuv Jain smiling at the microphone with an acoustic guitar during his concert in Ludhiana, dated 18 November 2023 on Wikimedia Commons, photo by BhikhariInformer, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); placed on a blurred, darkened extension of the same photo at 1200×630 by discography.in, and this cover is shared under the same licence. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anuv_Jain_at_Ludhiana_concert.jpg.

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