Guest Column: ISAMRA’s Undistributed Royalties List Exposes India’s Performer Rights Gap

India’s music industry has spent years discussing streaming growth, chart culture, and monetisation models. Yet, behind the headlines and billion-stream success stories lies a quieter reality: hundreds of singers and recording musicians may still be unaware that royalties are waiting for them.

Recently, the Indian Singers’ and Musicians’ Rights Association (ISAMRA) published a list of nearly 290 singers and musicians whose royalties remain undistributed because they are not registered members of the copyright society. The announcement, amplified by music industry veteran Achille Forler, has once again brought performer rights into sharp focus.

At the heart of the issue is Section 38A of the Copyright Act, 1957, which grants singers and recording musicians an inalienable right to receive royalties from the commercial exploitation of their recorded performances. In simple terms, whenever music is commercially played, across public venues, broadcast platforms, digital ecosystems, or licensed performances, performers are entitled to a share of the revenue generated.

The challenge, however, is not the absence of royalties, but the absence of awareness.

The royalties are reportedly collected through organisations such as PPL India, Novex Communications Pvt. Ltd., and Recorded Music Performance Limited (RMPL), before eventually reaching ISAMRA for performer distribution. But unless artists formally register with the copyright society and complete the required documentation, the money cannot legally reach them.

This is where the current conversation becomes larger than a mere administrative exercise.

For decades, many Indian performers, particularly session musicians, regional singers, backing vocalists, folk artists, and legacy performers, have operated in an ecosystem where copyright conversations largely revolved around labels, composers, or publishers. Performer royalties were often poorly understood, inconsistently tracked, or simply ignored altogether.

The digital era has changed that equation.

As India’s music consumption expands across streaming services, short-video platforms, live events, radio, television, and public performance networks, the royalty economy attached to recorded performances has become significantly more valuable. What was once negligible for many performers is now evolving into a potentially meaningful revenue stream.

However, the effectiveness of any royalty system depends heavily on metadata, registration accuracy, and industry participation. An artist can only be paid if their recordings, credits, and legal identities are correctly documented within the system.

That makes ISAMRA’s latest disclosure important not just because of the undistributed funds involved, but because it exposes a larger structural gap within the Indian music business: the disconnect between rights that exist on paper and rights that are actually realised by creators.

The industry has made substantial progress in recognising songwriter and publishing rights over the past decade. Performer rights may now be entering a similar phase of mainstream attention.

The publication of this list should ideally become more than a compliance update. It should serve as a wake-up call for artists, managers, labels, aggregators, and industry bodies to prioritise rights education with the same seriousness as music marketing and distribution.

Because in today’s creator economy, ownership is not only about making music, it is about knowing what you are owed, where it comes from, and how to claim it.

(By:Achille Forler, founder of Silk Road Communications)