India’s royalty reality versus the promise of the law
India’s royalty system is supposed to operate with clear rules, public disclosures and predictable payouts. On paper the law is strict. In practice the experience of most independent creators does not reflect that structure. Writers and composers still face uncertain timelines, inconsistent reports and no reliable mechanism to trace their earnings. The tension between legal design and ground reality is the biggest unresolved issue in the ecosystem.
Streaming fundamentally changed how music travels, but it did not change how India processes royalty data. Platforms send usage logs. Those logs enter a maze of matching, conflict resolution, repertoire checks and internal verification. At every stage the process is vulnerable to delays, incomplete metadata or unclear ownership claims. Most creators only see the final number, never the reasoning behind it. For many, that gap is more damaging than the delay itself because it removes any ability to question the outcome.
Societies and labels do publish the information they are legally required to. The problem is that the disclosures rarely go deep enough to let creators verify anything meaningful. A tariff chart without the actual usage volume tells you nothing. A distribution policy without concrete examples is just a theoretical document. Annual reports that summarise revenue in broad categories give no insight into how much value is being generated for each type of right. The law demands transparency, but compliance often stops at the bare minimum.
Even creators who want to understand the system end up depending on personal contacts inside organisations. That dependence is a sign of structural failure. A transparent system should eliminate guesswork, not require a social network to access basic clarity.
What other markets reveal
When you compare India to markets that have taken transparency seriously, several differences stand out. Organisations like PRS in the United Kingdom or ASCAP in the United States are not flawless, yet they publish detailed financial statements, distribution ratios and breakdowns of their administrative expenses. They release member databases and licensing categories that let outsiders understand the structure of their operations. None of this stops disputes, but it dramatically reduces the ambiguity that creators in India deal with routinely.
These organisations also prove something important. Scale is not the obstacle. They manage vast repertoires and thousands of members yet still maintain predictable payout cycles. Their legal obligations are often less demanding than India’s. The consistency comes from systems, not statutes.
Digital infrastructure is the real differentiator. In mature markets, usage data is processed through well established pipelines that minimise friction. Errors still happen, but they are traceable. Dashboards give creators insight into where their works were used, by whom and in what volume. These dashboards are not real time miracles. They are simply structured reflections of a functioning data pipeline. India lacks such infrastructure and until that gap is closed, accusations, misunderstandings and disputes will continue to pile up.
Another point that often gets overlooked is the role of metadata discipline. Foreign organisations enforce strict metadata standards that cut down on ambiguous ownership claims. India’s ecosystem is flooded with works that have incomplete credits, outdated agreements or contradictory registrations. Technology alone will not solve that problem. You need governance.
What a functional ecosystem must deliver
Tech oriented distributors and analytics driven companies are bringing more visibility to digital income, and that pressure is useful. Artists get access to clearer dashboards and better statements which naturally pushes the rest of the industry to raise its standards. But distributors cannot replace collective management bodies. They can only fix the parts of the pipeline they control. Public performance royalties, broadcast royalties and many mechanical royalties still depend entirely on societies and the quality of their systems.
A workable royalty environment in India needs a few basics that should not be controversial. Public repertoires that can be searched without gatekeeping. Distribution rules that include concrete examples rather than abstract formulas. Audited reports that show real numbers rather than broad categories. And usage data delivered in formats that creators can understand without decoding jargon.
Trust will not come from larger collection figures. Anyone can announce a percentage increase. Trust comes when an independent creator can look at a statement, see exactly how each number was produced and verify it with the information already published publicly. When that becomes possible, the industry stops operating on assumptions and private clarifications. It starts operating on shared facts.
Right now India is stuck between ambition and execution. The law promises transparency. The market demands it. The creators need it. The only missing piece is a commitment to build systems that match the scale of the music economy. Until that happens royalties will remain something creators talk about but rarely experience with confidence.
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