The administration of copyright in creative industries has never been a matter that individual rights holders can manage alone. A composer whose work is performed across thousands of radio stations, hotel lobbies, restaurants and streaming platforms simultaneously cannot possibly negotiate individual licences with each user, monitor unauthorised performances or collect royalties from each source. It is precisely this structural impossibility that gives rise to the institution of the copyright society a collective licensing body that administers rights on behalf of a class of rights holders, issues blanket licences to users and distributes collected royalties to members. In India, this framework is governed by Sections 33 to 36A of the Copyright Act, 1957, as significantly amended by the Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 and it finds its most prominent expressions in the Indian Performing Right Society Limited (IPRS) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), the two copyright societies that between them administer the most commercially significant performing rights in the Indian music industry.
The collective licensing model is not merely an administrative convenience. It serves a deeper copyright policy purpose: ensuring that rights holders particularly individual creators such as composers, lyricists and performers are not commercially marginalised by the structural asymmetry between the scale of use and the practical capacity of creators to enforce their rights. The Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 was in large measure a legislative response to the exploitation of this asymmetry, introducing reforms that strengthened the position of authors and composers relative to producers and music labels and reinforcing the statutory framework for copyright societies. Understanding how copyright societies function under Indian law and how IPRS and PPL have evolved, is therefore an exercise in understanding a core mechanism of copyright protection in the creative economy.
The Statutory Framework Under Sections 33 to 36A
The Copyright Act, 1957 establishes chapter VII Section 33 that no person or association of persons shall carry on the business of issuing or granting licences in respect of any work in which copyright subsists or in respect of any other right conferred by the Act, except under or in accordance with the registration granted by the Registrar of Copyrights. This provision is the bedrock of the regulatory regime: it restricts the collective licensing business to registered copyright societies and prevents unregistered bodies from operating in this space. The registration requirement is not merely procedural it vests the Registrar of Copyrights with supervisory authority over the formation and operation of these societies and ensures that rights holders are protected through a regulated institutional structure.
Section 33(1) further specifies that a copyright society shall be a society duly registered under the Act and that any such society must be an association of persons the majority of whom are authors or other owners of copyright. This majority requirement, introduced and reinforced through the 2012 amendments, was designed to correct a structural problem that had long afflicted the functioning of IPRS in particular namely, the domination of the society’s governance by music producers and labels rather than by the composers and lyricists whose works the society was ostensibly established to protect. The requirement that authors constitute the majority membership is a direct statutory assertion that copyright societies must be author-centric institutions.
Section 34 governs the administration of copyright societies and empowers an owner of copyright to authorise a copyright society to administer any right in any work by entering into an agreement with the society. Importantly, Section 34(1)(b) provides that a copyright owner, once having authorised a copyright society to administer a right, may also individually exercise that right. This provision preserves the autonomy of individual rights holders even within the collective framework a rights holder does not surrender the ability to negotiate directly with a user simply by being a member of a copyright society. Section 35 requires every copyright society to be administered by a governing body in accordance with regulations that must conform to the scheme prescribed under the Act and Section 36 obliges every copyright society to maintain proper accounts and to have those accounts audited annually. Section 36A, inserted by the 2012 amendment, empowers the Central Government to issue directions to copyright societies on matters of policy, providing a measure of public interest oversight over the collective licensing system.
The Indian Performing Right Society: History, Restructuring and the 2012 Reform
IPRS was established in 1969 and is the designated copyright society for performing rights in musical works and literary works underlying musical compositions meaning, in practical terms, the rights of composers and lyricists. For decades, however, IPRS operated under a governance structure in which film producers and music labels, as assignees of copyright, held effective control over the society’s direction and revenue distribution, often at the expense of the composers and lyricists whose underlying works generated the performing right income in the first place.
The Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 intervened decisively in this dynamic through amendments to Section 17 and the introduction of the proviso to Section 19(5) and Section 19(8), which together established that notwithstanding any assignment of copyright in a cinematograph film or sound recording, the authors of underlying literary and musical works shall be entitled to receive royalties for any utilisation of their works in modes other than as part of the film or sound recording. The practical consequence for IPRS was transformative: composers and lyricists acquired a direct, statutory entitlement to a share of performing right royalties that could not be extinguished by assignment agreements with producers. IPRS was subsequently re-registered under the amended framework, with its membership restructured so that authors composers and lyricists constitute the majority of its governing body, as required by Section 33(1).
Today, IPRS administers the public performance rights and broadcasting rights in musical and literary works on behalf of its author and publisher members. It issues blanket licences to radio broadcasters, television channels, hotels, restaurants, event organisers, airlines and digital streaming platforms and distributes the collected royalties to members according to a distribution scheme that reflects the statutory priority now accorded to authors. The Delhi High Court’s engagement with IPRS in various proceedings over the years has clarified the boundaries of its licensing authority and the enforceability of its claims against unlicensed users.
Phonographic Performance Limited: Sound Recordings and the Distinct Right
PPL occupies a distinct but complementary space in the Indian collective licensing landscape. Where IPRS administers the rights of composers and lyricists in their musical and literary works, PPL administers the rights of owners of sound recordings primarily the major music labels in respect of the performance and broadcast of those recordings. The distinction matters because under Section 13(1)(c) of the Copyright Act, 1957, copyright subsists separately in a sound recording as a distinct work from the underlying musical and literary works. A radio station that broadcasts a recorded song requires two separate licences: one from IPRS for the performing right in the composition and lyrics and one from PPL for the right to broadcast the sound recording. This dual licensing requirement has been a persistent source of contention in the Indian broadcasting industry.
The Bombay High Court’s judgment in Super Cassettes Industries Ltd. v. Music Broadcast Pvt. Ltd., 2012 (49) PTC 71 (Bom) addressed the interface between the performing right in musical works and the right in sound recordings in the context of broadcasting licences. The case arose from a dispute between T-Series and Radio Mirchi over the terms of a licence for the broadcast of sound recordings. The court examined whether the Copyright Board had jurisdiction to fix royalties under Section 31 of the Act where a rights holder refused to grant a voluntary licence on reasonable terms and affirmed the Board’s power to intervene in the public interest. The decision is significant because it demonstrated the limits of a rights holder’s power to withhold licences from broadcasters and the copyright society and individual rights holders alike operate within that constraint.
PPL was, for several years, not registered as a copyright society under Section 33 and instead functioned as a licensing company exercising rights assigned to it by its member labels. This distinction had legal consequences: an unregistered body cannot, under the proviso to Section 33(1), carry on the business of issuing licences as a copyright society. PPL’s registration and the regulatory questions arising from its earlier unregistered operations have been the subject of proceedings before the Copyright Board and the High Courts, with the Delhi High Court in Phonographic Performance Ltd. v. Hotel Radhika, 2007 (34) PTC 400 (Del) examining the enforceability of PPL’s licences and its standing to sue for infringement on behalf of its member labels. The court’s analysis turned on the nature of the assignment of rights to PPL and whether PPL had sufficient title to maintain infringement actions a question that goes to the heart of the legal architecture of copyright societies and licensing intermediaries.
The Copyright Board and Compulsory Licensing as a Check on Society Power
The collective licensing framework does not operate without regulatory oversight and the Copyright Board now subsumed within the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) and subsequently reconstituted following the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 exercised a significant supervisory function over copyright societies and their licensing terms. Section 31 of the Copyright Act, 1957 empowers the Copyright Board to grant a compulsory licence in respect of any work withheld from the public, where the owner of copyright refuses to allow communication to the public on terms that the Board considers reasonable. This provision operates as a structural check against the monopoly power that copyright societies could otherwise exercise through collective blanket licensing: if a society sets unreasonable royalty rates or refuses to license entirely, a broadcaster or other user may seek compulsory licensing relief.
The Copyright Board’s determination of royalty rates under Section 31D introduced by the 2012 amendment to provide a statutory licensing mechanism specifically for broadcasting organisations has been particularly contentious. Section 31D entitles any broadcasting organisation desirous of communicating a work to the public by way of broadcast to do so upon payment of royalties at rates fixed by the Copyright Board, without requiring the prior consent of the rights holder. The scope and interpretation of Section 31D, particularly whether it extends to internet broadcasters and streaming platforms or only to traditional radio and television broadcasters, has been the subject of active litigation, with the Madras High Court in Tips Industries Ltd. v. Wynk Music Ltd., 2019 SCC OnLine Bom 13446 decided by the Bombay High Court holding that on-demand streaming services are not “broadcasting organisations” within the meaning of Section 31D and therefore cannot avail themselves of the statutory licensing regime under that provision. This judgment has significant implications for the negotiating power of copyright societies and rights holders vis-à-vis streaming platforms and for the licensing framework that governs the Indian music streaming market.
The Royalty Distribution Obligation and Author Protection
One of the most practically significant aspects of the post-2012 framework is the obligation imposed on copyright societies to distribute royalties in a manner that reflects the statutory entitlements of authors. Section 34(3) requires that a copyright society shall, in the interest of the members, make provisions for the payment of equitable remuneration to the members. Read alongside the 2012 amendments to Section 19 particularly Sections 19(9) and 19(10), which provide that any assignment of copyright that does not provide for the author’s right to receive royalties equal to that of the assignee shall be deemed to be void the distribution obligations of copyright societies acquire constitutional significance: they are the enforcement mechanism for the author’s statutory royalty entitlement.
In the music industry context, this means that IPRS’s distribution scheme must ensure that composers and lyricists receive their proportionate share of performing right royalties and that producers and labels cannot, through assignment agreements, divert the entirety of collective royalties to themselves. The practical implementation of this requirement has not been without difficulty and the Copyright Office’s supervisory role under Section 36A has been invoked in ensuring that distribution schemes conform to the statutory mandate.
Infringement, Enforcement and the Society’s Standing to Sue
A copyright society’s ability to enforce the rights it administers is central to its utility for members. Under Section 55 of the Copyright Act, 1957, civil remedies for infringement include injunctions, damages or an account of profits and delivery up of infringing copies. A copyright society that has been authorised by its members under Section 34 to administer and enforce rights in their works stands in the position of an authorised licensee or assignee for enforcement purposes and has been recognised by Indian courts as having locus standi to institute infringement proceedings on behalf of its members. The Delhi High Court’s decisions in proceedings brought by IPRS against hotels, restaurants and event organisers who performed copyrighted musical works without obtaining licences have consistently affirmed the society’s right to relief and have imposed injunctions and awarded damages against unlicensed users.
Conclusion
The collective licensing framework under Sections 33 to 36A of the Copyright Act, 1957 represents one of the most practically consequential dimensions of Indian copyright law, governing the flow of royalties across the music, film and broadcasting industries. IPRS and PPL, as the principal copyright societies in the performing rights space, have evolved significantly particularly in the wake of the 2012 amendments that reoriented the framework toward author protection and rebalanced the governance of societies away from producer and label dominance. The dual licensing structure for musical works and sound recordings, the Copyright Board’s compulsory licensing jurisdiction and the statutory royalty entitlements of authors under Sections 19(9) and 19(10) together constitute a framework that is more protective of creators than it was a decade ago, though significant challenges remain in implementation, distribution transparency and the extension of the framework to digital and streaming environments.
The judgment in Tips Industries v. Wynk Music signals the unresolved frontier question: whether the statutory licensing mechanism under Section 31D was designed for an era of linear broadcasting and whether it is adequate or even applicable to on-demand streaming. As the Indian music market continues its migration to digital platforms and as AI-generated music begins to raise fundamental questions about authorship and the identity of the rights holders that copyright societies are meant to represent, the framework will be tested in ways that the drafters of even the 2012 amendments could not have fully anticipated. The copyright society as an institution must adapt its governance, its distribution technology and its engagement with digital licensing norms if it is to remain the effective intermediary between creators and the commercial world that its statutory mandate envisions.
References
- Copyright Act, 1957 Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice: https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1957-14.pdf
- Copyright Rules, 2013 Ministry of Education (Copyright Office): https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules2013.pdf
- Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 Legislative Department: https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2012-27.pdf
- Copyright Office, India Official Portal: https://copyright.gov.in
- Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) Official Website: https://www.iprs.org
- Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL India) Official Website: https://www.pplindia.org
- WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), 1996 WIPO: https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/
- TRIPS Agreement, Articles 9–14 WTO: https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf
- Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) IP India: https://dpiit.gov.in
- Supreme Court of India Judgments Portal: https://main.sci.gov.in
- Delhi High Court Official Portal: https://delhihighcourt.nic.in
- Bombay High Court Official Portal: https://bombayhighcourt.nic.in
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