Registering with IPRS and PPL

Which royalties does your distributor not collect?

Your distributor collects the recording side — the money streaming stores pay when your master is played — plus platform revenue from YouTube Content ID and CRBT. It does not collect the publishing side, and it does not collect public performance royalties on the sound recording.

Indian law treats a song as two separate copyrights: the musical work with its lyrics, and the sound recording of that work. Different organisations license each one. If you wrote and recorded your own track, both sides are ultimately yours — but only the recording side arrives automatically. The full map of who pays what is in the royalties guide.

What is IPRS and who should join?

IPRS is the Indian copyright society for authors, composers, lyricists and publishers. It licenses the underlying musical work and lyrics to broadcasters, venues, events and platforms, then distributes what it collects to registered members. Join if you wrote the melody, the lyrics, or both.

Membership categories matter. Apply as the role that matches your actual contribution — author (lyricist), composer, or publisher — because the category determines which share of a collection you are entitled to. Details and current criteria are on the IPRS membership page for authors and composers.

What does it cost and how long does it take?

IPRS applies a one-time application processing fee of ₹1,200 for authors, composers and their legal heirs, and ₹2,200 for publishers. Plan for approximately 45 working days from a complete application to approval.

Fees and timelines are published by IPRS and can change; confirm them on IPRS before paying, and pay only through the official portal. Nobody needs to charge you a separate agent fee to submit a membership form.

What happens after approval?

Approval gets you a membership; it does not register your songs. IPRS issues a membership number and an IPI number, then sends the format for uploading works. Registering each work is a separate step, and it is the step people skip. An unregistered work simply does not appear in the distribution run, no matter how much it is played.

Two things to get right when you register works:

• Splits agreed in writing, before release. Undocumented co-writing splits cause more royalty disputes among Indian independent artists than piracy does. Agree the percentages while everyone is still friendly.
• Consistent credits everywhere. The composer and lyricist names you register with IPRS should match the credits you gave your distributor at delivery, or the two records will not reconcile.

Where does PPL India fit?

PPL India licenses the sound recording for public performance and broadcast — your master being played in a restaurant, a gym, a retail store, an event, or on radio. Where IPRS represents the people who wrote the song, PPL represents whoever owns the recording.

For an independent artist who financed their own recording, that owner is usually the artist. If you assigned the master to a label, the label collects that side instead. So the first question is not how to register with PPL but who owns this master — which the copyright guide covers. Membership details are on PPL India.

The order to do this in

Registration is administrative rather than creative, and it rewards doing things in sequence:

1. Release and distribute first. Distribution records are the evidence a society asks for, so a distributed catalogue makes the application straightforward. Start with free distribution if you have not released yet.
2. Apply to IPRS in the correct category, with complete documents, and expect roughly 45 working days.
3. Register every work once your membership number and IPI arrive — not just the ones you think will earn.
4. Sort out the recording side with PPL if you own your masters and your music gets public performance use.
5. Keep credits identical across distributor, IPRS and PPL, permanently.