Producers drag Musical maestro Ilayaraja to court over controversial royalty issue

Ilayaraja, who is called as Isai Nyani, the musical maestro of southern film industry who also won Padma Vibushan award recently for the year 2018 has not only won the hearts of music lovers, but also the hearts of millions with his magnetic melodies of 70s & 80s.

He had composed music for almost all the top directors during that time & top directors were waiting for his dates to compose music where stories were made only for his music. But the musical maestro is now facing the heat from few of the film producers as they also want royalty share from Ilayaraja which he has been demanding from the singers to perform his songs.

Ilayaraja's songs are performed by many singers in many local & international concerts even by the original singers who actually sung that song. Ilayaraja in fact also gave statements that whoever performs his songs should pay a certain amount as royalty as he is the creator of the song. This irked many people from the cine fraternity as to how can he claim the royalty as a many contribute a song including a singer, musicians & the producer of the film. Ilayaraja has also issued legal notices to few of the familiar senior singers from the film fraternity for singing without paying royalties.

A group of 6 producers have approached Madras High Court & filed a civil suit seeking rights to get 50% of royalty from Ilayaraja claiming that they are the actual producers of the movie. The producers claim that they also have rights to get 50% royalty as they are producers of movie & because of them Ilayaraja composed music. They claimed that the producer always has been the first owner of all copyright of the film including rights over the songs featuring in the films, both audio and visual.

They sought a direction from the court to decree a permanent injunction declaring that film producers are the absolute owners of the copyright of the films including the rights over the music featuring in the films for which Ilayaraja was the music director.

The case will be coming before the court for the hearing after the Christmas vacation which would put an end to the copyright & royalty controversy which is been lingering for few years in Tamil film industry which was started by Ilayaraja.