Quite some time back, I had written a blog about the royalty payments to singers, music composers and lyricists of the songs. The royalty which is received by film producers had to be shared by them with the singer, composer and lyricist of the songs as per Copyright Act and Copyright Rules. In fact IPRS is representative body of owners of music-ie Singers, Composers and writers (lyricists).
Today there is a news that one of the top film production house namely Yash Raj Films (YRF), as they own their own music label, has been booked by Economic Offence Wing (EOW), YRF’s Chairman & MD Aditya Chopra, his brother Uday Chopra and others have been booked for criminal breach of trust and failing to pay Rs 100 Cr to several music composers and other personalities. The main charge of IPRS is that YRF has been collecting royalty from licensed users of music since 2012 but has not been passing the same to composers anf lyricists. The complainant statement to police read “ The settled legal position is that while the production house can monitor and collect royalties for sound recordings and its own (equal) share , it can not collect royalties on behalf of composers and lyricists. The collection of royalties for them is sole and exclusive domain of IPRS and no one else.”
The complainant alleged that YRF had collected huge amounts of royalties from various platforms and had illegally diverted the same through unknown channels for personal gain. IPRS claimed that they had documentary evidence in the form of an exchange of letters between them and YRF, clarifying its position as a copyright society, that is the only entity authorised to collect and distribute royalties on behalf of its members. The complainant further added that YRF has, in order to create a smokescreen been giving little and arbitrary amount of royalties to lyricists and composers. “Additionally, knowing that its acts are illegal they are coercing the members of the IPRS to execute additional agreements in an attempt to cover its illegal activities that include having collected 100% royalties including those dues.”
Now if the charges levied by IPRS are proved to be right then YRF is in great trouble. In my opinion a big production house which has produce block busters like Chandni, Lamhe, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Veer Zara, Bunty Aur Babli, Dhoom series, Jab Tak Hai Jaan and many more in last 3 decades should not have done this sort of misappropriation and if they have done then they deserved to be punished, which can be lesson to others. The fact is that , because of royalty issue , so many of well known singers and composers have stopped working with many production houses/Music company owners. So you hardly find a songs of singers like Sonu Nigam, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik because they do not want to part with their royalties, because now the trend is that Producer/Music companies in their agreement with artists have a clause that the artist that royalty is being waived off by them. The producer/music company might pay the singer little higher fees in lieu of waiving royalty. Same is the case with lyricists and composers.
Friends if you notice now the trend of using one particular singer for hero or heroine, or one lyricists for all songs of the film, composer composing music of all songs of the film, is gone. Now any singer will sing for any actor whether his/her voice suits the actor is immaterial, similarly there are numerous lyricist and composers of songs in one film. This way they ( producers/music cos) have ruined the Hindi film music, and it is no surprise that as soon as you come out of theatre after watching the film you forget the songs. On TV if you watch any singing reality show, you will always notice the songs performed by various budding singers are generally from the old films. It looks like Hindi film music is dying a slow death. Earlier the name of film’s music composer was prominently displayed in publicity of the film, which is not the trend now. Now you will find the name of composers in very fine print in the film publicity material.
That’s why music lovers are feeling so miserable and disgusted with the present Hindi film music scene that they are stopped listening to the music of most of the present days films, now once in a blue moon you may find film with a good music track composed by one composer, and last such movie was almost two years back, which was ‘Padmavat’. Now you will hardly find the earlier composers like AR Rahman, Anu Malik, Vishal Shekhar, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and many others, composing Hindi film music. I hope the better sense prevail the production houses and instead of commercial aspect they should look into quality of music like the earlier days.
What you say my friends.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
20 Nov 2019.
R. N. Mungale.
True. The quality of music in Hindi films is not very good these days.