Bollywood singers, music label owners lock horns

Singers Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal, led by Sonu Nigam, have refused to sign contracts with music labels that do not give them a share of royalty for the songs they sing.

It is a war of sorts between a bunch of Bollywood’s A-list singers and leading record labels.

Singers Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal, led by Sonu Nigam, have refused to sign contracts with music labels that do not give them a share of royalty for the songs they sing. High drama unfolded on Friday when Sonu Nigam tweeted that he may give up singing in Bollywood because of ‘unfair’ contracts, after he refused to sign a contract for Shekhar Suman’s Heartless, the music right of which is with T Series. “It (such a contract) is feudal, humiliating and illegal,” he tweeted.

The 40-year-old later told us, "Shaan, Shreya (Ghoshal) Sunidhi (Chauhan), sab log pareshaan hai. Sunidhi was asked too and she has refused to sign it."

Alleging that singers are often forced to sign these ‘illegal’ contracts, Nigam says, “There are a lot of illegal contracts floating in the business. Companies are pressurising artists to sign some illegal contracts."

Music label owners deny these allegations. "They’re misinterpreting the law. We sign the contracts with the film producers, not the singers. Do we ask them for money when they perform live and make money from the music that does not belong to them, except their own voice in it?" asks Bhushan Kumar of T-Series.

HT Image