Singers protest ‘feudal’ contract

A week ago, Shekhar Suman decided to re-record Sonu Nigam and Sunidhi Chauhan’s songs for his directorial debut 'Heartless' after Bhushan Kumar, the head honcho of music label T-Series, threatened not to release the album. Kumar was upset because the singers had resolutely refused to sign a contract which Sonu has described as “feudal and exploitative”.
With this the on-going war between ISRA (Indian Singers Rights Association) and the music companies has grown uglier, and other singers like Shreya Ghoshal, Shaan, Neeti Mohan, Nikhil D’Souza, Arijit and Kailash Kher have joined the duo to fight for royalties.
So what is this contract which has B’Town’s leading voices up in arms? According to Sanjay Tandon, managing director of ISRA formed last July, the singers are being asked to sign a contract which stipulates that they are assigning their performer’s rights to the music director who passes them on to the producer who then has “exclusive right including but not limited to the right to reproduce the performance in any material form”.
A sample of this agreement, given to Mirror by Tandon, further states that in the case of any audiovisual recording of a performance, the singer has to assign his/her right to royalty under Section 38A (2) to the music director who passes it to the producer in lieu of a lump sum of royalty payment.
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Finally there’s one clause under Section 31C according to which a singer has to agree that he/ she will not perform or record a song, and this includes cover versions, without the permission and licence of the music director and/or the producer. Shaan explains,“Besides being denied royalty, we have now been told that once we record a song for a film, we cannot sing it on any other platform.”
Tandon and the singers insist that these clauses are in complete violation of the amendment in the Copyright Act, which was brought into force on June 21, 2012, which states that “provided that, notwithstanding anything contained in this subsection (38A (2), the performer shall be entitled for royalties in case of making of the performances for commercial use.”
Further, Section 39(A) states that as per Section 18 and 19, “the right to royalty cannot be assigned or waived by the performer except to the legal heir of the performer or to a Copyright Society (in this case is ISRA) and any agreement to the contrary shall be void”.