To raise awareness about music copyrights, the city will soon see a unique campaign – Halla Bol — undertaken by Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), the apex licensing arm of the Indian Music Industry (IMI). PPL works on behalf of music record label owners who have suffered heavy losses due to rampant piracy and rapid digitisation of media.

The six-day awareness programme on music copyrights will involve PPL officials meeting city club owners to educate them on laws that require them to pay the body for licences. The awareness campaign that comes to the city after Bengaluru, however, is set to take a rare turn as Hyderabad will be an educating experience for the officials as club owners, DJs and music producers have some tough questions for the authority.

While the big players in the industry are fighting the lack of clarity on the procedure, smaller organisers and venues are weighed down by the exorbitant prices.

“Although the process of getting the licence is very easy, there is lack of clarity. Sometimes, PPL comes for money and sometimes IPRS, among other bodies, jump for licence money,” says Raj Singh, the owner of Rain. “Also, the annual fee may not be expensive for club owners, but when it comes to events like weddings for which PPL charges anywhere between `25,000 and `40,000, many people give up.” Sanjeev Mehta, owner of Bottles and Chimney, says, “All big clubs are paying yearly, so the PPL and music record owners are only losing out due to events and smaller pubs.” He adds, “I think PPL will gain a lot more if they made the fees pocket-friendly.”

There have been times when the clubs in the city have been asked to pay licence fees even when an international music producer is playing. While DJs who mix commercial tracks with their beats come under the ambit of PPL, music producers who make their own compositions don’t. This has left many club owners disgruntled wondering why the authority is ignorant of the industry.

At a press conference launching Halla Bol, Soumya Chowdhary, country head of PPL said, “The tariffs are well formulated based on whether the events are sponsored, non-sponsored or for charity. We are not asking the club owners who have heavy entry fees to share profits with us, all we are asking are for the fees that are required by law to be paid for the record labels.”