The music of India includes multiple varieties of religious, folk, popular, pop, and classical music. The oldest preserved examples of Indian music are the melodies of the Samaveda that are still sung in certain Vedic Śrauta sacrifices. India's classical music tradition is heavily influenced by Hindu texts. It includes two distinct styles: Carnatic and Hindustani music.

Panchavadyam temple music in Kerala.

The earliest account of Indian musical hymns is found in the 1000 BC Sāmaveda. It proposed a tonal structure consisting of seven notes, which were named, in descending order, as Krusht, Pratham, Dwitiya, Tritiya, Chaturth, Mandra and Atiswār. These refer to the notes of a flute, which was the only fixed frequency instrument. Both the Hindustani classical music and the Carnatic classical music systems are based on the melodic mode (known as Rāga), sung to a rhythmic cycle or tala. These principles were refined in the nātyaśāstra (200 BC) and the dattilam (300 AD).

Purandaradasa is considered the "father of carnatic music" (Karnataka sangeeta pitamaha). He concluded his songs with a salutation to Lord Purandara Vittala and is believed to have composed as many as 475,000 songs in the Kannada language. However, only about 1,000 are known today.

Prominent contemporary Indian musical forms included filmi and Indipop. Filmi refers to the wide range of music written and performed for mainstream Indian cinema, primarily Bollywood, and accounts for more than 70 percent of all music sales in the country. Indipop is one of the most popular contemporary styles of Indian music which is either a fusion of Indian folk, classical or Sufi music with Western musical traditions^.