India's leading indie music company T-Series joins membership of IPRS

By Emmanuel Legrand

India's leading independent music company, Super Cassettes Industries Limited – known as T-Series – has decided to join the membership of the Indian Performing Right Society Limited (IPRS) in a move that will strengthen the licensing position of the performance rights organisation.

  In a joint press release, the two companies describe this new development as "a watershed moment in the Indian music industry" that will provide "a game changing boost to the IPRS." It added: "T-Series presence as a member will significantly benefit authors and music composer members of IPRS." IPRS represents music composers, lyricists and music publishers.

  The privately-owned company had been historically reluctant to join IPRS as it was controlled by record labels and did not have governance rules that allowed transparency and efficiency. Sources in Mumbai tell Creative Industries Newsletter that T-Series' management has been engaged in discussions for a long time now with IPRS, which has since been fully reformed under the aegis of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and that it is likely that they have received guaranties that the society will continue to transform. 

A logical progression

  T-Series Chairman and Managing Director Bhushan Kumar, who will join the board of IPRS, explained in a statement that joining IPRS was "a logical progression for the company" and that the decision to join IPRS was made "in the interest of the entire music industry – today the entire industry, creators, music businesses, all united, represent a seamless coalition of stakeholders contributing to our country’s progress and working together in our common interest." 

  IPRS Chairman Javed Akhtar said, “I see this as a homecoming for T-Series and thank Mr Bhushan Kumar and the T-Series family from the bottom of my heart for entrusting IPRS with its copyright catalogue once again. This is a win-win proposition for T-Series and for our author and music composer members who will benefit tremendously."

  Added Kumar: "T-Series will bring more value to IPRS and its members. We look forward to IPRS growing even more with our support in the future so that it can benefit the creator community and the industry even more."

Improve IPRS' licensing business

  Effective immediately, IPRS will now represent the T-Series music publishing catalogue of lyrics and musical compositions and will be able to license it to various platforms. IPRS and T-Series said it would "vastly improving the ease of doing business for numerous music licensees including broadcasters, digital services, telcos and various other small businesses intending to license music in a seamless single window clearance for underlying works embodied in a sound recording or a music video."

  T-Series is not only one of India’s leading music label, it is also one of the largest film production studio in the country. It brings to IPRS a music library of more than 200,000 titles, including over 50,000 music videos, comprising of more than 15,000 hours of music. It also operates a bouquet of YouTube channels that attract over 164 million subscribers at the end of 2020. 

  The musical compositions and lyrics performed in the music videos and in T-Series catalogue cover more than fifteen Indian languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Bengali, Gujarati, among others. 

A common cause

  Akhtar told Money Control that he expected IPRS' revenues to grow yearly by 30 to 40% thanks to the input from T-Series' catalogue. He added that only one major player in India was yet to join IPRS, YRF Music, but he had confidence that "better sense will prevail on them and sooner they will join because they have no choice."

  Akhtar added: "The entire music industry is united today in its determination that creators, music businesses all will work together for the common cause." 

  In an interview with IPRMentLaw, Neeraj Kalyan, President of T-Series, said the "unification" of authors, composers and music labels and publishers "is the only way to ensure that everyone gets their dues for their contribution into making of a song." 

Create awareness

  He went on: "The misconception that ‘music is free’ or that only one license is needed when a song is played can only be removed once we join our efforts to create awareness amongst the masses and users of music in India. Joining IPRS is only the first step and together, whether through negotiations or availing remedies available to us in law, I am sure that publishing rights in India will get a major boost and will lead to growth of the music industry."