The Hindu : New Delhi News : New Year bash sans music?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

New Year bash sans music?

Manisha Jha

NEW DELHI: The Capital may fall short of venues to celebrate and welcome the New Year this time round as the apex licensing arm of the Indian music industry, Phonographic Performance Limited, has served legal notices on many well known hotels and pubs in the city.

These legal notices have been issued to all venues that have not paid the requisite music licence fee to play music at their year-end bashes and action will be taken against them if they fail to pay up. Disc Jockeys too will not be spared if they continue to play music without paying the licence fees, said PPL.

PPL’s National Sales Manager (Events) Sowmya Chowdhury says: “Musical nights and customised New Year packages are some of the most prolific means of revenue for pubs and hotels. A New Year’s Eve bash cannot be imagined without music, yet when it comes to paying for the commercial use of music, profit makers choose to evade the licence fee.”

“The pity is that end-consumers, the party-goers, do not realise the repercussions of the actions of their favourite party place that results in losses for artists and music companies. Playing commercial music without paying a copyright licence fee is liable for contempt of court under Section 35 in the Copyright Act. To control this, we have expanded our operations this year to a national campaign in all major cities,” she adds.

Each year pubs and hotels rake in revenues with customised New Year packages ranging from Rs.1500 to Rs. 20,000 but refuse to pay the nominal tariff of Rs.40,000 onward to PPL depending on the number of hours for which the music is played.

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