MUMBAI: Dandiya event organisers in Mumbai, including the Falguni Pathak starrer Sankalp and a few others who have been abstaining from paying music licence fee have given in for the licensing bodies' demand of paying royalties Most of the organisers have bought the licenses from Yashraj, Big Music and labels under the Indian Music Industry (IMI) wing.
Confirms IPRS CEO Rakesh Nigam, Some of the key dandiya organisers like Sankalp have bought the licenses and are legally playing our music We were targeting some of the big event organisers by asking them to shell out for the music they play, thereby giving the proper signals to the smaller ones There have been arguments as to why the organisers should pay for the music, but they have now agreed to pay the requisite fee....
At the IMI meet held in Mumbai on Tuesday, Nigam stated that the dandiya organisers would make money out of our music, but hesitate to pay for the basic content. Depending on the event, the license fee payable to IPRS varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs one million.
Till earlier this week, Sankalp had refrained from paying the licence fee to major labels like Yashraj, Big Music and IPRS, citing exorbitant rates that made it unfeasible for them to pay up.
When contacted, Sankalp director Devendra Joshi said, We have to pay this license fee inspite of the fact that most of our music list comprises traditional folk songs. If we look at the distribution, it would be 90 per cent traditional songs and 10 per cent of Bollywood hits. There is a huge fan following for Marathi devotional songs of Vitthoba and Saibaba, Mata ki chowki songs and traditional raas garba. This tussle for licensing goes on every year, where we finally have to pay for the licenses....
Big Publishing head Sanjay Tandon says, There were problems earlier with the dandiya organisers not agreeing to pay royalties, but now almost everyone playing our music has bought the required licenses. License fee for Big Publishing varies from Rs 25000 to Rs 1,00,000, depending on several factors like the number of people at the event, the location of the venue and also if it is going to be telecast on television...
It seems that the IMI has tightened the screws on licensing music events this season for the first time. Jain Jagruti Centre secretary Ramesh Morbia, a dandiya organiser based in Ghatkopar avers that this is the first time that they have shelled out money for music licences. Till last year, we used to just play music without licences, but this time we have acquired licences from IPRS and PPL for a few lakhs and Yashraj Music and Big Music for Rs 25000 each. We never knew that we are supposed to pay for music but we negotiated with these companies and purchased the licenses....