September 1st , 2007

Sudhir Shreedharan, Editor, IMI chats up with Mr. Jagtiani, Director Operations, PPL India.

Mr.Ramesh Jagtiani, Director Operations, PPL India

Mr.Jagtiani, briefly tell us about the role of the PPL and how it is affiliated to The IMI?

PPL is a copyright society which stands for Phonographic Performance Ltd. with the Indian head office in Andheri, Mumbai. We also have branch offices in Delhi, Calcutta and Madras. PPL also has its representations in various countries in the world. There are 160 offices worldwide with the head office based in London, UK.

Our job basically is to protect the copyright interests of our member music companies. At the last count this was approximately 150 companies based all over India.

Let me also explain our association with the IMI.

IMI stands for the Indian Music Industry. We are a sister company of the IMI. Both the companies have a common board of directors and we are a non-profit organization basically instituted and supported by the Copyright Board in Delhi, which comes under the ministry of the HRD to look after the copyright interests of the member music companies.

 

Please share a few details about your prominent member companies.

Some of our top prominent companies include SAREGAMA, Universal, Sony, TIPS, Venus, Virgin Music and Times Music. We also have players on a smaller level.

Many of these prominent companies are associated with their foreign counterparts – For example - SONY BMG India is an Indian arm of the global giant SONY BMG Music. SA RE GA MA has a tie up with EMI, UK and Virgin is a part of the Virgin Atlantic Group. But other companies such as TIPS and VENUS are essentially Indian. In accordance to which they dot have any international catalogue to sell or boast of. But that is again different as compared to TIMES Music, an Indian company which is part of the TIMES Group. They have foreign affiliations and they release foreign repertoire from time to time.
                                                                                                         

 

Tell us about the various Licensing Systems in PPL?
We are a copyright institution, authorized and registered with the Government of India, to collect royalty fees or license fees as it is called, from various institutions or establishments that use the music of our member companies.

There are 4 broad divisions with in PPL, which are the license fees collecting bodies for the PPL.

The major one is of-course Broadcasting, which covers radio, FM, All India radio and so on.

Then there is the Telecasting medium which include the music channels particularly and also non music channels but where in music is played.

Then we have a major stream, which relates to cell phones, and Digital Formats.

And the fourth is the Public Performance division headed by me.The Public Performance Division is broad based and manpower oriented. It is essentially a field job and it relates to our field staff going out to various commercial establishments that use music all over the country.

There are 48 categories of music users until now and each has a name and a number. For example category number 1 is discotheques, category no 13 is hotels, category no 16 is shops so on and so forth. These 48 categories also have their own prescribed tariff structure. It’s published in the gazette of India and we go about our job collecting license fees.

Since our company is a non-profit organization you have to understand that this is not money making on our part. We are just implementing the copyright act or the copyright law and disbursing 85 % of the collection to our member companies that we represent. The balance 15% is what we are authorized to keep towards our overheads, expenses and so on.

 

 

Does PPL provide any benefits to the people / its regular licensees who apply for these licenses? If yes what are these?
None. We are not here as a social service organization - neither to our member companies nor to the licensees.

We collect from one place and give it to the other place. We are a facilitator, a via media of sorts and we are here just to implement the law, so there are no benefits that go to the licensees. They pay because as per the law they are expected to pay which we collect and give it to our member companies, which is our prime goal.

 

 

What action is initiated by PPL against those who do not purchase a license or in the legal terms violate the Copyright Law?
We basically have 3 types of music users.

The first category comprises of licensees who are already aware of the copyright law and they pay without any arguments so there is no problem in that area.

Then there is another category which needs to be explained the necessity of paying to us, in the interest of the implementation of the law. They come around over a period of time. They check with their legal consultants and then they make their payments to us.

Lastly there is the third category. These are the chronic defaulters to the extent that they even threaten my manpower physically when they are out on the field.

Or they say ‘you do what you want legally or otherwise, we are not going to pay you.’

In these kinds of cases we have recourse to 2 ways -

We conduct a police raid and take the equipment along with the person. The second option is to go through the legal channel. This means sending a legal notice which is subsequently followed up and developed over a period of time by taking them to court. These are the two options we have at our command.

 

Can you elaborate on the growth of the IMI – PPL? What has it achieved since its inception? Also what is the projected growth for the next 10 yrs.?

Well I have been in this company since ‘96, which is when I joined about 11 years ago. During this time the company has grown phenomenally.

The manpower strength, avenues of connections, the ways of how we go about collecting our licensing fees have also gone from strength to strength. For instance 11 years ago the amount we collected at the national level is what we collect today by virtue of one single cheque through the Public Performance division.

When I joined here in ‘96 Mr. Lazarus was the chairman of the board as well as the President of Universal India. And it was his responsibility, if I might put it that way, to build IMI and PPL as two different companies to take care of the copyright interests.

Today for example we are approximately 150 employees all over the country. I am talking about just PPL and that too just for collection of royalties from the market.

I don’t want to get onto figures but on the other side with Mr. Lazarus’s acumen, management skills, foresight, vision and proven experience I would say that the future is exceedingly bright. This also means that we’ll have pressures that every organization goes through. But that makes it all the more exciting because if there are no pressures, then life is too dull.

 

Do you have a message for our readers?

When I joined here 11 yrs ago, to be honest, even I was not aware of what copyright was and why there was a need to follow the rules set under the copyright act.

I now understand that music companies are legally entitled to the royalties that are due to them.

So my message to the people would be to abide by the law.

The license fees is just a small contribution that music users need to make, if the music industry as a whole has to survive in this country without the threat of piracy.

So I would suggest that people should abide by the law, make regular payments of the license fees which are very nominal and become a good Indian citizen.

 

On that note, we sign off…… Thank You very much Mr.Jagtiani.

Thank You.

 

 

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