Indian pop

Indian pop music (Hindi: हिन्दुस्तानी पॉप संगीत) often known as Indian-Pop, Hindi Pop, Indipop or Indi-pop, refers to pop music originated in the South Asian region with the playback singer Ahmed Rushdi's song ‘Ko Ko Korina’ in 1966 and has since then been adopted in India, Bangladesh, and lately Sri Lanka, and Nepal as a pioneering influence in their respective pop cultures. Following Rushdi's success, Christian bands specialising in jazz started performing at various night clubs and hotel lobbies in Karachi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Dhaka and Lahore. They would usually sing either famous American jazz hits or cover Rushdi's songs.

The term refers to studio albums in contrast to filmi i.e., motion picture soundtrack music, for Indian cinema. The term Indipop was first used by the British-Indian fusion band Monsoon in their 1981 EP release on Steve Coe's Indipop Records. Pop music began gaining popularity across the Indian subcontinent with Pakistani singers Nazia Hassan and Zohaib, forming a sibling duo whose records, produced by the Indian Biddu, sold as many as 60 million copies. The launch of MTV India and Channel V in late 1990s gave a huge push to India-pop music. It was this time when the music reached its greatest heights. Music was greatly affected by online piracy and peer-to-peer sharing in the early 2000s. This forced bands and artists to perform in live shows to earn their livelihoods, instead of focus on creating new albums, which wouldn't be able to sell for money. Music also became more regional, such as Bhangra Pop and Tamil Rap. In the late 2000s, Indi-pop music faced increasing competition from filmi music. Major pop singer stopped releasing albums and started singing for movies. The recent notable Indi-pop albums are Viva!'s - Reloaded, Himesh Reshammiya's Aap Ka Suroor, Mikey McCleary's, Bollywood reprise-B seventy by the band The Bartender.

Since the 2010s, non soundtrack music in India is mostly dominated by classical and folk music. In 2016 Arnie B released "Saaya" with Sony Music, and the video got over million views on YouTube. Being dubbed "The New POP Sensation" and bringing international style audio and video is giving hope to pop music to take center stage in India like it has around the world.