What does it really cost to build a music career in India?
Between July and September 2025, Orange Juice Lab surveyed 80 non-film independent musicians across 29 cities to uncover the economics of survival in India’s independent music ecosystem.
The Cost of the Dream offers a rare, data-driven portrait of the gap between aspiration and infrastructure — mapping how artists earn, spend, and sustain themselves in an environment still taking shape.
This first-edition benchmark captures income, expenses, and trade-offs at the grassroots, connecting numbers with lived realities to expose both fragility and opportunity.
It is not an industry-wide census but a foundation for one: a baseline to track change, identify structural gaps, and collectively imagine fairer systems for artists in India.