If your Bhojpuri track plays in a Jaipur hotel lobby, or a Haryanvi single turns up as background music in a Chandigarh cafe, that use is not free. Someone is supposed to pay for the recording. For years, hotels and event companies used a simple excuse to delay those payments: PPL India was not registered as a copyright society. On 11 June 2026 that excuse stopped working.
The Registrar of Copyrights registered Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL India) again under Section 33(3) of the Copyright Act, 1957. PPL itself announced it. Music Business Worldwide covered the reinstatement on 24 June, and PPL's own About page now states the certificate date as 11 June 2026. For independent artists and small labels who own their masters, this is not abstract law. It decides who can collect when your recording is played in public.
Two rights in one song (again)
We keep saying this because most royalty confusion starts here. A finished release carries two separate copyrights:
- The composition — the tune and the words. In India that side is usually collected by IPRS, the Indian Performing Right Society. We wrote a step-by-step IPRS guide for lyricists and composers earlier.
- The sound recording — the actual audio file. Public performance and broadcast of that recording is what PPL (and bodies like Novex or RMPL for other catalogues) deal with.
A cafe that pays for one layer has not cleared the other. The Calcutta High Court made that point in the IPRS–Vodafone dispute, and law firms still cite it when venues get two separate licence demands. Discography's October 2026 explainer lays out the split for indie musicians who own both layers.
Why June 2026 mattered
PPL held copyright-society registration for sound recordings from 1996 until 2014. After the 2012 Copyright Amendment, it tried to re-register, then withdrew and operated as a private company. In 2021 the government gave sole registration for sound recordings to Recorded Music Performance Limited (RMPL). Years of fights followed, including Delhi High Court cases where commercial users argued that an unregistered PPL could not force licences the same way.
GB Aayeer, PPL's CEO, said after the June certificate that uncertainty over PPL's status "stands resolved," according to MBW's report. Mandar Thakur, PPL's chairman, called it a milestone for collective administration of sound-recording rights. PPL says it represents 500+ music labels and licences hotels, clubs, shops, malls, events and radio for public performance of its members' recordings.
Courts are still sorting tariffs and older periods. The Supreme Court appeal in the Azure Hospitality matter, and earlier interim views about unregistered licensing, mean pre-June 2026 disputes may not vanish overnight. What changed for new use after 11 June is simpler: the "PPL is not a registered society" line is gone.
What a Rajasthani or Punjabi indie label can actually do
PPL's membership page says any individual, firm or company that owns or controls sound recordings, and holds the rights to communicate them to the public by performance and broadcast, can apply as a music label partner. You fill a preliminary KYC form, upload repertoire, and wait for review. Submission does not guarantee acceptance. There is no published figure for what a typical independent catalogue earns from PPL, and we would not invent one.
Practical steps we suggest to artists we distribute:
1. Confirm you still own the public-performance rights in your masters. If an old contract assigned those rights away, PPL membership will not pull them back. 2. Keep a clean catalogue list: title, ISRC, release date, language, and who owns the recording. That is the same hygiene that helps with Content ID and sync. 3. Apply to IPRS for the writing side if you wrote the song, and separately consider PPL (or another recording society) for the master if you own it. 4. Do not expect overnight money. Societies pay based on reported use and their own distribution rules. A song that never leaves headphones will not suddenly earn from hotel lobbies.
Where streaming fits — and where it doesn't
Your distributor delivers the recording to Spotify, JioSaavn, YouTube Music and the rest. That income is for on-demand streaming. Public performance in a physical venue or on terrestrial radio is a different cheque. At RMX Music we send releases to 95+ platforms and pass through 95% of the streaming royalties we collect. We do not replace IPRS or PPL. Artists who write and release their own Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Punjabi or devotional songs often need both: distributor for streams, collecting societies for the composition and for public playing of the recording.
A Label account on RMX is ₹4,500 lifetime. An Agent account is ₹15,000 lifetime if you run multiple labels. More than 3,000 artists and 2,200 labels have put over 20,000 tracks through us.
If your masters are already live and you still own them, read PPL's membership page this week, tidy your repertoire sheet, and sign up at RMX if you still need clean distribution into the stores. The June registration does not make anyone rich by itself. It does mean the recording side of Indian public-performance licensing is back on formal footing — and independent owners should show up for it.