Asks Man with the Midas Touch producer Sunil Bohra, who has launched a music label to retain copyright over songs made for his films

Tanu Weds Manu producer Sunil Bohra has angered major music companies of Bollywood that have been buying music rights of film scores for unlimited periods, leaving producers with practically no profit margin from music sales.

On September 9, Bohra launched a music label, a move that industry insiders say, can potentially break the monopoly that record labels have over music rights. In Bohra's company, producers retain the ownership of the music.

Explaining the motive for launching his own label Bohra says, "It's not my intention to take on T-Series or any other music company. But we need to closely examine where all the money generated from our film music is going. In my company, producers and not music companies, are the owners of the music."

Bohra says his move has elicited interest in the industry. "Besides Hindi producers, I've interested filmmakers from Tamil and Telugu cinema, who want to sell their music rights to our company.

My agenda is very simple -- I want to protect the producer's music copyright. After all, we work so hard on the music, and we get nothing. It's not as if there's no money in the music industry.

A producer can earn as much as Rs 50-60 lakh from the digital platform alone. So why should record labels buy music rights from us, and make it look like they're doing us a favour?"

Bohra began thinking along these lines after he had to pay money to buy the rights of the song Ho Ja Rangeela for his film Not A Love Story directed by Ram Gopal Varma, despite the fact that the song was from a film that had been directed by Varma earlier (Rangeela).

"This is not only unfair, it's destroying the music industry, " feels Bohra.

Significantly, none of the established music companies responded, when asked what they thought of Bohra's music company for producers. Ramesh and Kumar Taurani of Tips, however, said they support Bohra's move.