India's radio royalties explained: Section 31D, IPRS and PPL India for independent artists

In India, a radio station does not need your permission to play your song. It can broadcast any published song without asking, as long as it follows a procedure and pays a rate set by law. That is good for access and bad for bargaining power, and it means an independent artist's radio income depends heavily on paperwork the artist controls: registration and metadata.

This explainer covers Indian law as it applies to FM and AM radio. It isn't legal advice.

What Section 31D says

Section 31D of the Copyright Act, 1957 creates a statutory licence for broadcasting. Any broadcasting organisation can broadcast a literary or musical work and a sound recording that has already been published, on these conditions:

• Prior notice. The broadcaster must give notice of its intention, stating the duration and territorial coverage of the broadcast.
• Royalties to each owner. It must pay "the owner of rights in each work" royalties at the rate fixed by the rate-setting body (the Act still says the Copyright Board). Radio and television rates must be set separately, and the body can require an advance.
• Credits. The names of the authors and principal performers must be announced with the broadcast.
• No re-edits. No alteration beyond what is technically necessary, other than shortening for broadcast, without the owners' consent.
• Records. The broadcaster must keep records and accounts, report to owners and let them inspect.

The notice is not a formality. Rule 29(4) of the Copyright Rules lists what it must contain, including the channel, the work, the owner, the authors and principal performers, the programme, the timing and the royalty details. According to LiveLaw, Radio One's operator, Next Radio, challenged that rule, and the Supreme Court rejected the challenge in 2025.

Two royalties, two societies

Every song on the radio is two copyrights: the composition (music and lyrics) and the sound recording (the master). Two collecting societies split them. Unimarks Legal puts it simply: IPRS represents composers, lyricists and music publishers, and PPL India represents record labels and licenses sound recordings. Performers have a separate royalty right under Section 38A, and PPL India's registration has been unsettled; we covered both in our neighbouring rights explainer, so we won't repeat them here. PPL India's own tariff and licence pages blocked our fetches, so this piece gives no PPL rates.

The songwriter half is better protected than it used to be. The 2012 amendments added provisos to Section 18(1). As the Calcutta High Court summarised them in Vodafone Idea v IPRS (2026), the author of a song in a sound recording "shall not assign or waive the right to receive royalties to be shared on equal basis" with the copyright owner, except to legal heirs or a collecting society. Any assignment to the contrary is void. That case was about caller tunes, not radio. But in 2023 the Bombay High Court reached the same position for FM. Per CISAC's summary, it held that stations must pay royalties for the underlying songs even though they already pay the owners of the recordings. It ordered the broadcasters to pay IPRS under the 31 December 2020 rate order of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) within six weeks, or face injunctions.

What IPRS asks a radio station to pay

The tariff scheme IPRS attached to its 56th AGM notice sets the rate for AM and FM stations. It is 5% of gross revenue per channel per city, or a minimum annual fee, whichever is higher. The minimum depends on the city category (1 lakh is 100,000):

Worked example (IPRS's own). An A+ channel declares gross revenue of ₹3.5 crore (₹35 million) to the government. 5% of that is ₹17.5 lakh, which beats the ₹17 lakh minimum, so the station pays ₹17.5 lakh. The minimum is due in advance and the ₹50,000 excess afterwards.

Our second example. A category D channel with ₹50 lakh of revenue would owe ₹2.5 lakh at 5%. That is below the ₹4.5 lakh minimum, so on this tariff it pays ₹4.5 lakh.

Three details matter. The scheme says this radio tariff has applied since 1 April 2018, so it is not new. It does not cover rebroadcasts or simulcasts on the internet, DTH, cable or mobile networks, which need separate licences. And community radio has its own tariff with a much lower minimum: ₹50,000 a year or 5% of gross advertising revenue, whichever is higher, with music capped at 120 minutes a day.

Who actually sets the rate

The tariff is what IPRS asks for. Under Section 31D, though, a broadcaster can use the statutory licence and pay the rate fixed by law. Since the IPAB was dissolved in 2021, rate disputes have gone to the High Courts. S.S. Rana reported that the IPAB's rates were due to expire on 30 September 2021. The Delhi High Court ordered status quo on royalty payments for radio broadcasts of sound recordings and, on 10 November 2021, issued a public notice inviting suggestions on revising those rates.

We could not find a final determination since then, or the 2026 consultation on 31D rates mentioned in our brief. If you know of one, tell us and we will update this piece.

How to make sure you get paid

A checklist for an independent artist who writes and releases their own music:

• If you wrote it, join IPRS as a composer, lyricist or both, and register every song with its splits (who wrote what share). Do it on release day, not after the first radio play.
• If you co-write, agree the splits in writing first and make sure every writer registers the same numbers.
• If you own the master, you are the sound recording owner that Section 31D says must be paid. Look at whether PPL India or another registered society can license and collect for you; our neighbouring rights piece covers the current state of PPL India's registration.
• Get the metadata right. Song codes (ISWC) and recording codes (ISRC) are how plays are matched to you. See our metadata guide.
• If you sign a publishing deal, check it doesn't take your equal writer share; under the 2012 provisos, it can't. Our publishing deals explainer covers the deal types.
• Keep your own play log. Note station, date and time whenever you hear or are told about a play, and compare it with your society statements.
• Don't ignore community radio. It has its own IPRS tariff and broadcasts to a 5 to 10 km area, which can suit a local release.

What we think

Section 31D trades artist control for broadcaster certainty. You can't stop a station playing your published song or hold out for a better rate. The rate comes from a court process where broadcasters, labels and societies have lawyers and independent artists usually don't. In our view that is defensible only if two things work: the rate is reviewed on time, and the money reaches the people who made the music. On the first, the record we could find shows rates under status quo since 2021, which is a long time for any price to stand still. On the second, the law has improved since 2012, and courts are enforcing it. But the system is built for catalogue owners with full metadata.

That is why registration is the whole game for independents. An unregistered song on Indian radio still earns a royalty in principle. In our reading it just has nowhere to go. We also think artists undervalue the credit rule in Section 31D(5). Stations have to name the authors and principal performers with a broadcast. That is free attribution the law already gives you, and a simple way to check a station's logs against what you hear.

One caveat for anyone comparing numbers. IPRS's 5% of gross revenue is its published tariff. What a station pays under a statutory licence depends on the rate fixed in the proceedings above, so don't treat the tariff as a guaranteed income figure.