India’s copyright reforms may have boosted royalty payouts for songwriters and composers. However, Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) Chairman Javed Akhtar says the battle is far from won, with nearly 95% of people in public performances still not paying it.

At the recently-concluded Soundscapes of India (SOI) Season 2 in New Delhi, Akhtar offered a blunt assessment of India’s music rights ecosystem — a landscape he has been trying to reform for over a decade. While the discovery and scaling of new talent has accelerated, with events like SOI, which, according to Akhtar, is helping little-known artists find visibility and to show their work to the world, he argued the country remains far from a fair-pay regime for songwriters and composers, adding that true fairness hinges on enforcin

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