Fair play, fair pay: The Indian music industry and royalties

As the reverberations of Bombay High Court’s April judgment, recognising musicians’ rights to their songs, are felt across the country, members of the music industry take us behind the decades-long fight for royalties

Here is a maths problem starring singer Lata Mangeshkar, composer R.D. Burman, lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri, and director Prakash Mehra.

In the winter of 1972, their song ‘Kaanta Laga’ debuted, making them X amount of money. Then, in 2002, came a remix, arguably one of the most famous iterations, picturing a sultry Shefali Jariwala in a black tank and braids, controversially flipping through a porn magazine. Later, in 2016, artistes Neha Kakkar, Honey Singh and Tony Kakkar decided to “revive the party anthem” with yet another rendition. Every remix, released by famous music labels or independent houses, cashed in on the original genius: the lyrics, the composition, the voice.

‘Kaanta Laga’ lives as a cultural sensation, but what does X represent? How much money should the song’s original authors receive? Much like the song, the question of music royalties is timeless. Over the last decade, lyricists and composers have tried to solve X, fighting for recognition in the court of law and public opinion.

They recently inched closer to a solution. On April 28, the Bombay High Court passed a historic verdict directing FM radio stations Radio Tadka and Radio City to pay royalties to a song’s “authors” (lyricists, composers and singers) for using copyrighted music — setting a legal precedent for stations across India to do the same. “The value of radio is far greater in the music industry if you look at the revenue, and yet, the radio industry has been undercutting them and not paying them their dues,” says Amit Gurbaxani, a Mumbai-based music journalist.

The judgment grants legitimacy to the rights of lyricists and composers — reaffirming that the ownership of a song lies not just with film producers and labels, but also artistes who are often invisibilised within the music industry. “The judgment... is absolutely historic,” says singer-composer Anu Malik (think ‘Julie Julie’ in 1987 or ‘Oonchi Hai Building 2.0’ in 2018). “It is for every lyricist, every composer, who puts their heart and soul into creating music.”  

Authors sell their creation to production houses for a one-time fee, who in turn sell it to music companies. The music then takes a life of its own, streaming on radios, punctuating ads, beaming off cellphones as ringtones. “When rights are bought out, only the labels make money, not the people who are creating the music,” Gurbaxani notes. 

Copyrights within the music industry can be separated into pre- and post-2012 phases, cleaved by the passing of the Copyright (Amendment) Act. The amendments were a culmination of a legal fight that began in 1977, led by the Indian Performing Rights Society Limited (IPRS), a licensed copyrights collective which gathers royalties on behalf of members pan-India. It took 35 years, several court cases and one legal amendment for the law to recognise creators’ rights: a lyricist or composer holds copyrights to their work, they have a right to royalty — whenever the music is played (whether it’s original, a remix, or a rehash via reels or videos) — and, most significantly, this right cannot be transferred. The arrangement was to divide royalties 50:50 between the producers and authors.