The Year That Was – A recap of the past year at IPRS

The last year has been filled with struggle, patience, hope, and prayers. While being holed up inside our homes, we found unconventional and untried mediums to resume work. The workplaces might have been shut but the work never did. Especially at IPRS. We, at IPRS, took it as a challenge to wade through the unprecedented crisis and help our members as much as we can.

IPRS distributed over Rs. 180 crores as royalty amongst its members in the past year. To support its author and composer members, The Indian Performing Right Society Ltd. (IPRS) announced the release of an ‘Emergency Covid Relief Fund’, amounting to nearly Rs 6 crores in 3 instalments.
Speaking about the same, Rakesh Nigam, CEO, IPRS, said,
“Taking the current crisis into consideration IPRS announced the release of an emergency relief package for its author and composer members across cities, who were struggling to earn enough due to the nationwide crisis.”

While the top management was ensuring the welfare of our members, the rest of the team remained focused on achieving more than maximum in limited circumstances.

This resulted in IPRS closing licensing deals with many corporate organizations, social media giants, and DSPs. These include Facebook, Hungama Music, Alt Balaji, Sharechat, Resso, Ola, and Estee Lauder to name a few.

A big highlight of the year was induction of the music label T-Series into IPRS and on the Board. The other achievements on membership was the joining of some of the international publishers Kobalt Music, Fairwood Music, Flipper, Budde Music, Anara Publishing, Horus Music, etc. IPRS also announced its partnership with Muserk, the technology-driven global music rights administrator, to collect online Mechanical and Performing Rights for territory in the US. The brand’s journey has been exemplary, benefitting thousands of authors, composers and publishers sail through tough times.

To be updated with the times and be able to garner maximum utilisation from these significant partnerships, IPRS has upgraded itself technologically by incorporating the Back Office software system.
“The advantage of using Back Office is that we can get the members to register their data themselves. Every member has an individual login page where they can view and update their data. Once they are done, IPRS will check and sanitize it to ingest in the IPRS database,” explained Nigam.

Apart from this, the IPRS team was involved in various educational and knowledgeable initiatives and activities aimed to benefit the members. Projects like CreativeShala, Credit The Creators, Celebrating Musical Legends, HERMUSIC, KnowYourMusic, Musisodes have been well appreciated, and the recently announced legal segment #AskAmeet shall aim to answer your legal queries in simple language.

Webinars on topics such as Heading towards a healthy ecosystem in music in India, EducationInMusic, New Era in Music, KnowYourMusic series covering different genres of Indian Music addressed topics relevant to the day. IPRS also entered into associations with the Anahad Foundation and Dolby India to support and uphold the music creator community in India.

As we celebrated our 52nd anniversary on the 23rd of August, IPRS is geared and charged up to live up to all your expectations.

Talking about the future plans Nigam said,
“IPRS has also made the new member registration process online so that applicants don’t need to visit our office. Once their application is approved, we send them a physical deed to sign. We are working to get this process done online too but not all members might have digital signatures so we are working on it. IPRS also has an online license portal whereby a user can register for a license and even make the necessary payment. The license will be mailed to the user once the payment is authenticated.”

Our team is always eager to address your queries and help out in any way possible. We are happy to help and are glad to support you in your creative journey. Thank You for being a part of the IPRS Family. #TogetherWeCan