The T-Series Story

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T-Series & Music Piracy Contd...

During the early 1990s, Gulshan released a number of albums featuring religious songs. These were fairly successful. He even acted in, sang for and directed a few of the videos of such songs. These were run on the state-owned television channel Doordarshan. T-Series also began producing Hindi films. One of the company's first ventures, the musical 'Aashiqui,' was a huge success. This was followed by many more movies, a majority of which flopped.

However, the music of these movies was a success in almost all the cases. The success of 'Bewafa Sanam,' one of the many mediocre T-Series movies starring Gulshan's actor-brother Kishen Kumar, took the whole industry by surprise. Gulshan even invented the concept of the 'music bank' where tunes were stored till a movie or a record was identified to 'fit' them into. Things were going on rather smoothly - till Gulshan released a cover version of what was reportedly one of India's biggest blockbuster movie, 'Hum Aapke Hain Kaun' in 1997, violating the three-year waiting period stipulated by the Supreme Court. This time around, the attack on GCI's profits was too strong to be ignored and the company filed a suit against T-Series. In the same year, a few music industry players approached the former finance minister V P Singh, demanding that Gulshan be punished for violating copyright laws and pirating music. However, V P Singh reportedly6 dismissed them saying, "Don't come to me with your hard luck stories.

You've no marketing strategies so you haven't discovered the marketplace. Gulshan has. And you want me to punish him for his entrepreneurial ability?" As the 'Hum Aapke Hain Kaun' case went to the courts, Gulshan was murdered. With Gulshan's death began a period of uncertainty for the T-Series group. The music company was not doing very well as Gulshan had stopped buying music rights from outside⁷ and the T-Series' films had failed.

The other businesses were all relatively new and not yet well established. There were reports of infighting in the family regarding the control of the various businesses. Saregama, Tips and Venus, who had emerged as the leading players in the Hindi film music segment, had also ventured into film production. Though Saregama's movies did not do well, quite a few Venus and Tips movies were huge successes.

The December 1998 Delhi High Court ruling in the 'Hum Aapke Hain Kaun' case, which put an end to the cover version recordings, was the biggest blow to T-Series. The High Court order said that the makers of version recordings relied upon a special provision of the Indian Copyright Act [S 52(1)(j)]. Taking advantage of this provision, the pirates claimed that copyright owners of the compositions and lyrics were only entitled to a statutory license fee. They also said that once the owners received the license fee, they had to allow the fee payers to make sound recordings.

The Delhi High Court held that there was no provision for such automatic licensing and the sound recordings could be made by third parties only after they had obtained permission from the copyright owners. The Court held that under the Copyright Act, assignments and licenses could only be made in writing. They had to be signed by the assignor/licensee. As GCI had categorically refused to grant a license/assignment in favor of T-Series and had also returned the cheque for the royalty amount sent by T-Series, it was able to win the case.

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6] Life in the twilight zone, www.rediff.com, September 2, 1997.
7] Gulshan had stopped buying the music rights from non T-Series producers, alleging that they were charging exorbitant rates. His decision to produce movies was also led by the fact that he did not have to buy the music rights for them. However, after his death, T-Series began buying the rights to film music again. The company's sales improved significantly with quite a few of its soundtracks becoming successes.