 In this episode of our series Power People, in this episode, today we have with us the CEO of IPRS, Mr. Rakesh Nigam. We welcome you, sir. Good evening to you. We just came to all our viewers from Laudist. We are so glad that you got time for us. So my first question to you, Mr. Nigam is, so tell us about your journey so far with IPRS. How is it going? I will first actually describe to you what IPRS is. IPRS is the Indian Performing Rights Society Limited. It's a company which is an unprofit-making organization, but it's a company limited by guarantee. So it's a company under the company that formed in 1969 and it collects royalties or licenses. Whenever music is played, you know, whenever music is played, it is required to make a license to play music. And in music, there are two types of licenses. One is the license in the literary musical world, which is called as the simple term, which is the lyrics and the composition, the tune. And second is in the recording of that same literary musical world. So whenever music is played, recorded music or a cinematographic film is played, you need to take a license for the literary and musical work. And if it's an audio for the sound recording and if it's an audio visual, then for the audio visual cinematographic film per se. So IPRS collects royalties or license fees and royalties whenever its members music gets played as a part of the recording or as a part of the cinematographic film. So IPRS, you know, from 1969 to today, if I say, I've been there with this organization in 2004. But you know, you have got lots of ups and downs, you know, because if you believe that music, it has been playing from a very long time, as a country, India is a very musical country. That, you know, if you say all our films have music, so you know, music has been an integral part of our journey so far, unlike western world, when music is not a part of the films. Music is music and films do not have generally 99.9% of the films do not have music at all. They may have background music but they do not have song. So you know, music is defined as songs or as background music. So India, most of the films do have songs in it because that is how we take our story forward. So whenever music gets played, you require to take this license and that is what IPRS does. So whatever money IPRS collects, it's actually being a nonprofit making or less administrative expenses, distributes it back to the authors, composers and the publishers of the music. Oh, that's great, that's great. So so far so good your journey. Yes, you know, copyright in India has always been very challenging, you know, because in people, you think that, you know, music is like air. So, you know, they think that if air is free, even for what else they know they need to pay, but they think that music is like air and music has to be, you don't need to pay for music. But, you know, over a period of time slowly, the concept that, you know, you need to pay for music what you're listening to is started happening. So everyone is slowly charted. So, you know, it will take a long time unlike compared to what happens in the western world where, you know, people are much more aware and that, you know, whenever they play music, they require to take a license. They very obediently take those licenses and pay for that. India is taking time because it's quite challenging when, you know, when you go back to users, they say that, you know, even if we don't sometimes pay taxes or electricity or something, what is this music tax we're collecting? So it has been challenging. But yeah, slowly everyone has started paying up. There are miles to go before we do that. You know, for me, the journey has been from 2004 when we were actually a 7 crore company to this year, we have crossed 560 crores. So it's quite been a challenge. And it actually, in fact, IPRS has been reformed or re-organized and re-birthed actually in the last five years because, you know, earlier there used to be huge disputes amongst the music industry. So, you know, after 2012, Javed Akhtar, who's our chairman, he got the law passed to say that, you know, others composers can assign their copyrights, but they will always have an ill-alienable right to royalty. So, you know, you can transfer your copyright to a music company or to a producer. But you cannot assign your equal share of royalty. So that has been the most challenging one from 2012. All that dust got settled in spite of that there used to be huge disputes. The dust got settled only by 2017 when Mr. Akhtar joined the board with new authors, composers and publishers also came on to board. And then we started the journey. So, you know, from 2017-18, where we were a 45 crore company to today, 560 has quite been remarkable and it's been growing good. Yes, there are a lot of challenges. Yes, we see that, you know, but as a growing organization, every country and every organization in India has its own set of challenges because we are a very unique market. You know, I expect that, you know, slowly but steadily, you know, people will start paying for music. That's great. That's great. So, we were talking about your journey. So, how does IPR is as society that works, that artist and music composers receive fair compensation for their work and what are the challenges? I'll tell you, you know, the basic thing is what we do is authors and composers and IPRS have actually, whenever we go to a user, we have tariffs for every user. So, you know, we have got different types of tariffs, but depending on different types of usages, you know, we have tariffs for hotels, restaurants, events, for radio, television, OTT platforms, and most of these tariffs, especially on digital side are actually on a global benchmark level or if they are there, we are always striving to bring them on to global benchmark because in the last few years, if you see, especially in the last three, four years after the COVID thing, most of the income has shifted to digital platforms because music has been consumed very heavily, but its consumption has shifted from normal to digital platforms. So, whether it be music streaming services, video OTT services, short video formats and everything because and this has been challenging because if you see in up to 2000, 2003, 2004, you know, the primary format of consumption of music used to only be cassettes and CDs or LP, the physical format, you know, and that time the music companies were in control of their market or in terms of pricing because you knew what CDs would be sold at, what these would be sold at. But in the last few years because technology companies are overtaken because, you know, they have aggregated content from various music service providers and they have started selling the music, you know, we are not in control of the destiny. So, you have a challenge in terms of getting a fair share of value. So, you know, we always strive with all users to get a fair share of value that have been huge challenges because in India, unlike the western world, if you see Apple, Spotify, are in US, are huge paid subscriber based models. Whereas in India, they are all free services, you know, to get, especially on Spotify, on Saavan and on Wink. So, to how to get correct value, you know, when we see that, you know, we need an amount of money, they say, oh, no, but we are not making money. So, we tell them that, look, you know, this is your business model. We do not tell you how to monetize your business model. But when you are using my music or my members' music, then you need to pay me fairly and well, despite of that, you know, we feel the music payments to the users and to the owners of copyright are actually not valued very fairly. So, with this constant dispute is there, but this will only get resolved when everything moves to a paid model because, you know, if it goes to a paid model, they need to not make losses. Whatever they are earning, they should be paid from that. But as long as they are giving it free to the subscribers, the music industry will always ask for the legitimate share or what they feel is the correct share because, you know, if you are not making money, doesn't mean that the music is not getting consumed. So, we say that, okay, at least we want this much as a minimum guarantee plus overflow, whatever, whenever you require. And because the models are free or advertising based, they are not able to recover that. So, they keep saying that we are not making money, we are making losses. So, we say, no, please understand, that is your business model. If you would have been charging a subscriber, you would have been making enough money. But you are actually, this is a marketing cost. When we talk to a telecom operator because, you know, Savan or Wink, it's a part of the survey. So, and I said, okay, this is not a part of your royalty cost. It's a part of your marketing cost because this is how you are retaining your customers. It's not that you're trying to just make money. You're wanting that if your customer comes to you, you come to my platform and I will give you music, I will give you videos, I will give you text, so I did everything. And I gave it to you free. See, like a classic example would be IPL today. When you are valuing IPL, probably people give it out to free on a utility platform or any value. But you pay for the content as per the bidding. So, why should music not get barely paid? So, you know, those are challenges, what we get. But whatever we collect, we try and see that, you know, author-composers' interests are not compromised. And even the publishers, because, you know, they are all equal stakeholders. The copyright amendment said in 2012 that, you know, the royalty needs to be shared equally between the author-composers and the other ones on operate. In India, music companies are both. They hold the sound recording rights as label, what you would listen to this terminology label and publisher globally or everywhere now. So, label means who's the owner of the recording and publisher means who's the owner of the literary and musical world. So, the music companies in India are the owners of both these rights. So, by that, they are members of IPRS. So, we need to take care of the interests of the author-composers as well as the publisher. And we have been doing it fairly reasonably well. Yes, there is scope for improvement. But as a growing organization, you know, we have our own set of challenges. Yeah, that's great. So, in your opinion, how has the music industry evolved in India over the last past decade? And how has IPRS adapted to these changes? There are many changes have come in the music industry. And how have you adapted to it? Tell me about that. You see, in the last 10 to 15 years, the music consumption has changed format considerably, you know, from being just being streamed and being just a pirated copy is being circulated on the net by a Napster or MP3 download. Actually, the world has moved toward the digital platform where now we have legitimate players coming and supplying music. So, you know, customers need not download music from a pirated website or anything. At least now there are genuine legitimized OTT players. So, the music industry has now started evolving and making partnerships with all these OTT players, whether it is Apple, Saavan, Amazon Music, Win. There are various short video formats also which have become very popular, whether it is YouTube or YouTube Shorts, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Riz, whether it is a mod, whether it's a Josh and all of them. So, you know, the consumption and the monetization has actually changed because, you know, the way consumption is happening up to few years back, there was nothing called a short video format, but TikTok came in and it made music videos very viral in the 32nd music video. Instagram reads. So, you know, that's really very popular. So, that is how monetization has started happening. So, we tell them that look, they do not have a business model, but they're attracting consumer and are actually driving valuations for their own business models in their cooking. We need to be paid fairly. For other platforms, yes, like YouTube or anything, they are actually making money by way of advertisements. So, they share a fair share of royalty with all the owners and which we share it back with the author composers and the publishers. Yeah. So, yeah. So, tell us about the process that how does ITRS society work with other organizations and stakeholders in the music industry such as record labels and streaming platforms. But how does all this works? The ITRS thing. What ITRS is is a society for author composers and publishers. In India, as I said, publishers are also the record companies which is very easy. Seamless, you know, that whenever we are dealing with the music label, it's also the publisher. So, we know that, you know, even we are coordinating with them because they sit on our board, because we have the biggest music publisher and the oldest music company which is quite active and the world's largest music companies on the board also. We have Sare Gama on our board, Vikram Mehra. We have Bhushan Kumar Ji on our board from Supercassette. We have Suni Music on our board. We have Debra Sanyal from Universal Music on our board. We have Bandar Akur from Times Music on our board. So, these are the major author composers, the publisher and Aditi Music from who represents from South and we have got Sushil Agarwal who's also a big time ultra music. They are representing not of film content. They are big in film content. And then we have got author composers led by Mr. Javed Akhtar. We have got East represented by Jeet Ganguly. We have got South represented by Aris Jai Raj. Saiti Charukha Palli. Bombay represented by Mr. Mayur Puri and Sameer Anjan. So, you know, we have a variety of author composers on our board. See, whenever, what we ask, whenever people become our members and you know, whatever works you have, please register those works with us because you know, in this today's age, especially on digital platforms, it is not an X amount it paid to you. You know, you need to go and claim for your IIT. So, you know, you need to know which song belongs to you, which song belongs to your members, so that you can go and submit your claims and accordingly pull that money out from the user and redistribute it back among the various holders in the ratio of 25-25, that is 25 to the lyric writer, 25 to the author, the composer and 50 to the publisher. We also assure that, you know, everything gets registered is because you know, today metadata is the most happening thing and we tell members to educate them that, you know, unless you register your metadata, it will not be possible for us to collect on your behalf and you get your rightful share because users would never want to pay you what it is and they will say, okay, this is the whole black, the whole database of the users or the usages, you know, they will give you a dump of probably croak billions of lines of data. So, you need to have technology. We use technology platforms to go and claim those royalties from the user. We submit CCID claims or even technical way that we submit claims to the user and then after they verify it, they give us royalties back according to our claims. Whatever claims you make, unless you process it back and get back to our users. This is with regards only audio. You know, whenever music gets great, there is something called as, you know, background music also which fetches royalties. You know, whenever you see a villain or a serial, you know, other than songs, also you see some amount of music which goes out in the background. So, you know, sometimes you don't realize what music it is, but then I'll tell you examples of when you see Shole, you know, when a rubber thing box, there is music which plays in the background or if you use the Satpe Pesatta when the negative Amitabh Bachchan walks on the music to it. So, those music are part of background music. So, background music also fetches royalties. So, whenever films are being shown on OTT platforms or on television, we actually even collect royalties from the TV broadcasters, from the OTT platforms and these are distributed on the basis of Q-sheets. So, you know, we always remember that you need to please register the Q-sheets because it is very easy to find out a song, but it's very difficult to actually analyze a Q-sheet and fill it in because what happens is Q-sheet means whenever music gets, whenever you are showing a 2-hour movie, then it's a 120 minutes movie, you will have only 90 minutes of music, 30 minutes only will be dialogues without music. Out of those 90 minutes of total music there will be 20 minutes of songs and another 70 minutes of background music. So, we say that this is filled in as a part of a Q-sheet that you can say for this movie or this serial this much is the music which has played during total time of the film or the serial being shown and accordingly we collect royalties and allocate it back over those Q-sheets so that, you know, it goes back to the author composers or the songs and to the background music composer and to the publishers of the music. Wow, wow, that's great. That's the whole process. That was very insightful. So, IPRS has recently have taken some initiatives and partnerships that you are supporting in the industry. So, can you discuss about the recent initiatives and collaborations? See, what we said is, you know, if you see the digital age newly, you know, we are wanting to make authors and composers aware of what is copyrights all about and because, you know, with, as I said, you know, now everyone has become a creator, you know, because if you see with advent of digital technologies, you know, everyone started making their own either short video formats or started making the songs and you don't need right now music companies or music publishers to release your songs in earlier days to require that. So, you may require them for better marketing or for anything, but if you want to do that independently on your own, also you can do that. So, we have gone back and make everyone aware of the rights, you know, even if you moved out smaller towns or cities, you know, a lot of people are not aware of what is copyrights and what are specific rights in music. They understand that even music companies in the smaller cities or some of the bigger cities also they are not very aware of what are the rights, copyrights in various rights. So, we go and educate them and also we have started this whole campaign as you asked to learn. So, what we say is to the authors and composers that you should learn and you should know what are your copyrights and where music is exploited on digital platforms or digital platforms, so that you should be aware of how music is monetized or how you can monetize the music. So, we are making them aware by tying up with YouTube, with Facebook, Meta, then we are tying up with even Dolby Atmos, even not just for making them aware about monetary rights, also to upgrade their own skills. So, we are also holding classes along with them for Dolby Atmos, how to do mixing of slang, then we are also holding out, we recently did it in various schools also, you know, music schools, music institutes, we do the whistling boards, it is the global music and other institutes make students and everyone aware because they are creators and they will ultimately have in the line of creating music or getting music created by someone. So, what copyright is all about and why should you value copyrights because you know, if you value your own rights, why should you know what those rights are and what those copyrights are. So, we have been tying up with various institutes for holding seminars, holding workshops with everyone, so that everything is educated. We had in all our learning programs, we have got even, you know, tune code, which makes people understand how content is deployed. See today, music, you can also become, you can become a creator and you can also deploy your songs on your digital platforms. So, you need to look at what is an ISR people, how music can, how various files have to be created, how they get deployed, how monetization happens on various platforms, you know, we are trying to make a whole ecosystem and make creators understand whether it's creators or even publisher. Some of the smaller publishers may not have those exposure to what's happening globally. So, we try and make them aware of what are your rights and how content is getting monetized. So, that you know, we want to give back to the society, other than getting the sorority, also upgrade their skills for everyone. Yeah, yeah, that was great, that was great. So, let's come to the technology and the digital platforms. So, what is the role that technology and digital platforms are playing in the music industry and how IPRS society is leveraging these tools to benefit your members. So, how are they benefiting through this? In the last few years, as I am repeating, but you know, what has happened is a lot of consumption has started happening only on digital platforms. You know, with billions and billions of lines and rows of data, it is physically impossible for any human being or any organization to go ahead and collect it manually. So, we are tying up and continuously improving with technology and service providers. When we have tied up, we haven't currently MIS Asia, but we are also shifting over to back office, which is one of the leading service providers in Central America, Central South America, to see that, you know, how we can go ahead, collect royalties from various digital platforms, process them and give it back to one member. The same way, even music companies are upgrading themselves to see understand what are the different formats of music which need to be deployed, what are the metadata which needs to be updated because all of this has to be uploaded because when music companies go through service providers, you need to give them complete metadata and along with the file format. So, what is the metadata? Because you know, the upload bulk data gets uploaded. You know, you can't upload one by song. So, you upload in thousands of songs or tens of thousands of songs we get ingested into the system on an OTT platform or any user. So, this helps with the service provider, technology service providers or these formats like ISRC, which are inbuilt in a song which identifies or ISWC, which identifies who is the author composer, ISRC, identifies who is the recording company which has released that music. This all helps the music companies or IPRS societies for ISWC to go ahead and claim those songs straight. You know, if there's a song which has got an ISRC and an ISRC number and if the music companies and IPRS knows about it, the sizes of it, whenever we're submitting a claim, even if we do not know the song title or who the author composer is and everything else, we can straight go ahead and think okay, this ISWC and this ISRC belongs to my member. We can straight go and claim that song on our behalf of our members. So, we have to use technology because with so much of happening all around the globe and with music, probably 80-85% monetization especially for record labels, you know, on the recording label side. For the publishing side, it's not just digital platform because we also collect from television, radio for background music which is a big source of income in public performance. But for music companies are primarily labor-loan and they get 80-85% of the income comes from streaming and digital platforms. So, they have to use technology to get and maximize their revenue. So, you know, technology, IPRS has also been trying to upgrade its skills. You know, we are also only grown up in the last 3-4 years after the digital platform. So, you know, we are also trying to catch up with all the best of the technologies which are available. So, it's not that we know everything. We are also on a learning current and there is a criminal scope for improvement. We try and utilize some of the best people which are available whether you try and use BMAT for monitoring or for tracking or we have a back office. So many people are there to do the service for our ads. So, we have a recently company called a DJ Monitor which actually monitor, which has come down and recently talking towards that, you know, they go ahead and actually monitor music being played in events and in hotels and they track and identify what music is being played and they submit us reports for that. So, this helps us to identify our music is getting paid, license that and also helps us to actually distribute it back in the because it's not just collections. Technology is being used in various things to ensure that, you know, the royalty gets back to the correct author, composer and the publisher. So, that is the most important role of any collective management organization as an IPR or something. So, that is how we leverage technology to rules. That's great. So, any advice do you have for aspiring musicians and composers in India who are just starting out their careers in music or in the industry any advice you have for them? I would say that in last music, actually for music creators, you know, this is a very at platform right now at time to get into music or for creation. Because, you know, you can do what you like you need not get dictated by what someone else wants. You can follow our passion. Yeah, you can follow the passion and create what you like to create. And if you see there are so many creators, those who have started up channels and they have become new channels they have getting huge royalties. So, that helps you break out from the shackles of the traditional models of how music or content was getting made or consumed. That will help. And secondly, I advise them that, you know, you are not creators you should know ultimately know what your rights are all about, you know, because without you knowing what your rights are then you cannot complain that, you know, this right was taken away from me that I did not know about it. So, please understand and learn because as much as you know about creating music and creating content or videos and around music, please know what your rights are all about is because ultimately the true asset what anyone has is only the copyright. Because ultimately in long term what will fix your royalties is your copyright in that content which you own. Because it's not just for you, you also leave it for your generations to come to Kaleeto especially on literary musical the copyright is not just ends with the author composer it continues 60 years from the death of the author and composer. So, these generations also get royalties whenever the music is exploited for his or her father, mother anyone who created that. So, you know, it's not that you know that. So, you need to know what your rights are and you can protect it not just for yourself but also for your future generations. That's very true, very well said. So, looking ahead of what are the goals and priorities of IPR society in becoming music, what's next? See two things, what do you think that we are saying continuously to improve technology because you know, we need to do best service our members so that you know, yes, there is a continuous process of aberration, challenges in terms of India being a country as I said, who people are not aware of the rights of how metadata, how important metadata is how important Q-sheets is. So, we continuously are educating our members to see why metadata has to be given why Q-sheets need to be prepared and so we hold educational classes every week for our members of how to fill Q-sheets how to fill in metadata for songs so that you know, they know how to do a lot of that because if you are not there, you will be left out of the race and then you will complain that my songs have got played but I am not getting my royalties. Secondly, we are also fighting for fair share of royalty you know, whenever music will get played, you need to be paid fairly I am saying that because a lot of people are still not making directly consuming music or using giving to the users free we are saying give us a fair share, not share what we deserve but at least a fair share and third is you know, in spite of so much of challenges like government passing laws and everything big users because of their dominant positions continue to deny to be royalties to creators whether it be author, composers, music publishers or sometimes even to content owners so you know, we want to see that a lot of these users of music actually be to IPRS, CMOS and see through that to the authors, composers and publishers of music if you see the retail market size where you know, more than India saying that you are 3 or 4 million retail shops all across India whether hotels, restaurants malls, those shops everywhere and most of a lot of them play music, I would say even if 5% of them play music we are talking about a number of 200,000, 2 lakhs so what IPRS licenses is not more than around 10 to 12,000 so we are talking that you know, we have a size we can grow up 20 times if everyone starts paying us for music so we are trying to slowly reach out to them a country like India where we have only 560 crores but you know if you go to advanced markets obviously we are just trying to see that over a period of time that would happen a US ASCAP BMI which is an equivalent of IPRS there has both of them put together connect half, three billion dollars annually a PRS in UK collects something like 700 million pounds Japan market collects a billion dollars in most of the European countries it's up one of 500, 600 million euros so you know, Asia it's a challenge slowly everyone started paying for it because in all other countries it will slowly happen but you know we are all trying to see that everyone has to pay for music and you have to pay a fair share of the music that was great, great, great so thank you so much Mr. Negum for this insightful session with us on our people thank you so much for your time it was great thank you thanks for inviting me, thanks for inviting IPRS to understand what role IPRS plays how do we protect the creators because ultimately you know any country is known by the creators and the creativity it protects us because you know I would say you know if you just see history you do not remember who the big kings were 50 years or 100 years of line and you will not know which industrialists or houses would remain after 50 years or 100 years but you would always remember the songs that were sung 50 or 100 years back and songs which are making today will also be remembered after 100 years so you know that is why we say that most of the countries across the world actually protect their culture and this is a soft power which we can export outside of India also so you know we all you know just pray to everyone that you know and request that you know please fairly compensate music or some film that got created so that you know you will get better creators and if you only reward the creators only then you will get more better music and music which will be remembered for generations and music people will remember that these are come from India today not to not to have brought India to the world power 4A they are our members Chandra Bose has written the songs and MN Karim sir has done compositions so we say that okay this is a soft power of music so people will remember the song that what people will do across the world they will not remember the big industrialists saw the power houses what we have so that is why we say protect, encourage copyright protect creativity pay for music, pay for music thank you so much, it was amazing chatting with you thank you so much for this insightful session we will be more than happy to have you on this show thanks for everything and you know hope for that we have been able to convey what IPRS does and we take this forward all music users should actually take licenses and pay the right to pay for music thank you