Song and dance sequences are still an integral part of Indian films but the industry has been hit badly in the last decade because of digital music piracy. Filmmakers spend cror­es of rupees on film music but end up losing almost all of it.

The losses are attributed to lack of awareness about intellectual property rights and the means to monetise original work.

Veteran music composer Ilaiyaraaja has now woken up to address the issue of copyrights protection. He announced his licensing agreement with Malaysia-based music label Agi Music on Tuesday. The company will henceforth hold rights of all of the music director’s compositions done before the year 2000.

“Movie producers and co­mposers are advised not to use my songs and background scores (includ­ing re­mixes) before 2000, without prior permission and licensing,” the music composer said.

“It is also mandatory for advertisement agencies, TV channels and TV serial producers to take proper license and permission from Agi Music to use my songs in their productions or

programmes.

Agi music has the rights to administrate all of my work before 2000, in all areas and platforms including broadcasting. Contrary to Indian practice, these rights do not belong to film producers and consequently no producer has the authority or right to distribute them,” he added.

The legendary music director has over 6,000 compositions in most of the major Indian languages to his credit. Post 2000, he sold the rights of almost all of his songs to film producers.

While the film industry is still battling the problem of protecting copyrights in the traditional media such as TV and radio, new media formats including ringtones, downloads and pen-drive copying have added to its woes.

Agi Music has tied up with Unisys Infosolutions to tackle this challenge and keep track of the company’s content in India. However, officials refused to divulge the financial details of the agreement between the two companies and Ilaiyaraaja .

Sumeet Singh, executive director of Unisys, said that the mobile value-added services provider would enter into agreements with offline stores and online portals to convince them to pay for original content. This method will help to protect copyrights as well as save the businesses of small vendors, he added.

Vendors will have to pay a nominal annual fee to get access to original content from Unisys’ library comprising over three lakh tracks in 41 languages, he said. Over 50,000 such vendors exist in north India alone, Singh added. But, the question still remains — who would ever come forward to pay for content in the name of fair and ethical business practice, especially in the absence of stringent regulations?