Music Licensing in India: PPL, IPRS, Novex and What the 2025–26 Rulings Mean for Restaurants, Hotels and Venues

By Lucy Rana and Pranit Biswas

The demand every Indian venue eventually encounters

When a restaurant, bar, café, hotel, banquet hall, gym, salon, retail store or event (and in fact any other commercial establishment, including offices) plays recorded music, that use is a “communication to the public” under the Copyright Act, 1957, and it engages the rights of the people who own the music.

In practice, those rights are mostly administered not by individual artists or labels but by organisations that manage them at scale — and it is one of those organisations that typically makes contact. The rights being enforced in most cases are:

• Synchronization Right: the right to “sync” a musical work or sound recording with visual or audiovisual content – is not enumerated by that name in the Act. However, it derives legal force from the broader Reproduction Right under Section 14 of the Act.
• Reproduction Right: directly and unambiguously covered under Section 14 of the Act
• Communication to the Public: expressly defined and protected under Section 2(ff) read with Section 14(1)(e)(iii) of the Act. The Act defines “communication to the public” broadly to include making any work available for being seen or heard or otherwise enjoyed by the public, directly or by any means of display or diffusion, irrespective of whether any member of the public actually sees, hears or otherwise enjoys the work.

The below names dominate the field, and they are frequently confused:

• IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society) — administers rights in the underlying musical work and the lyrics (the composition and the words), on behalf of composers, lyricists and publishers.
• PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) — administers public-performance and broadcast rights in sound recordings (the recording itself), on behalf of a large number of record labels.
• Novex Communications — a private company that also administers public-performance rights in sound recordings assigned to it by certain labels.
• RMPL (Recorded Music Performance Limited) –

For ease of reference, we have tabulated below the scope of rights each organization can administer and enforce, with respect to songs:

Further, a table clarifying the ambit and scope of various copyright collection societies and organizations is provided below:

This is why a single venue can receive more than one demand, and why more than one can be legitimate. A recorded film song is layered: the sound recording is one copyright; the melody and the lyrics are others. A licence covering the recording does not, on its own, cover the composition, and vice versa. It is common for a business to pay one body in good faith, assume it is fully covered, and then receive a second, separate demand for the other layer of rights.

We may mention that in the decision in IPRS v. Vodafone (Calcutta High Court – [A.O. (COM) No. 17 of 2024 and APOT No. 300 of 2024) clearly established that a licence from the sound recording owner does not automatically grant rights in the underlying musical and literary works.

We may mention that PPL and NOVEX covers sound recordings, and they are very aggressive in pursuing and collecting royalties in India.

The threshold question in these matters is less “how much is payable?” than “who holds the right being claimed, and for which period?”

The question the courts have been wrestling with: authority to licence

For years the working assumption was that a business receiving a demand would simply take the licence. That assumption became less straightforward, because the central question in this area — whether a private company may run a music-licensing business at all without registering as a copyright society — has been answered differently by different High Courts.

Section 33(1) of the Act provides that no person may “carry on the business of issuing or granting licences” in copyrighted works except in accordance with a registration granted under Section 33. The provision is designed to channel collective licensing through registered, government-supervised societies whose tariffs are regulated. The counter-argument, advanced for years by PPL and Novex, was that an owner of copyright (including a company that had taken an assignment of rights from labels) could licence under Section 30 without being caught by Section 33.

In Azure Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. v. Phonographic Performance Ltd., a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held, on 15 April 2025, that this argument did not hold for PPL. The Bench found, prima facie, that carrying on the business of issuing licences must be done through a registered copyright society or through membership of one, and that an assignee could not sidestep the framework by relying on its ownership. The Bench also indicated that, if such an entity were to licence, it would do so at the regulated tariff of the registered society for sound recordings, Recorded Music Performance Limited (“RMPL”).

That reasoning was followed shortly afterwards in AL Hamd Tradenation v. Phonographic Performance Ltd. The combined effect, at least for the period in question, was to open up an argument for commercial users: that the rate payable should track the transparent, regulated tariff of a registered society rather than a private collector’s own published card.

Whereas, NOVEX is another organisation active in the business of royalty collection, but they have never been a registered copyright society.

The 2025–26 litigation did not abolish music licensing. It re-anchored the debate around two issues the industry had long glossed over: authority, and regulated rate.

What changed on 11 June 2026 — PPL back on the register

On 11 June 2026, PPL was re-registered as a copyright society under Section 33(3) of the Copyright Act, 1957. This is the pivotal recent development, and it operates in PPL’s favour. For the period from that date onwards, the argument that “PPL is not a registered society and therefore cannot licence or sue” is no longer available. PPL is now positioned to enforce as a registered society, including through infringement proceedings under Section 51.

Registration does not, however, retrospectively cure the years in which PPL operated without it. Two questions remain live:

• The historical period. For usage before 11 June 2026, the authority and rate questions raised in Azure Hospitality and related matters are still being worked through, and the lead appeal is before the Supreme Court. Amounts paid on a private tariff during that window, and claims pursued for that window, may be open to challenge — a point the Pass Code Hospitality proceedings, discussed below, illustrate.
• Which tariff, and one society or two. Registration settles authority; it does not automatically settle whether a particular amount reflects the correct regulated rate, nor does it merge the separate sound-recording and musical-work rights into a single licence.

Where Novex and IPRS stand

Novex. As mentioned earlier, Novex is not a registered copyright society. Its position therefore continues to rest on the owner/assignee theory that the Delhi Division Bench doubted in Azure Hospitality. The High Courts are not aligned: the Bombay High Court, in litigation involving Novex and Trade Wings Hotels, accepted that an owner/assignee may licence without registration, while the Madras High Court took the opposite view in a matter involving Novex and DXC Technology. Until the Supreme Court settles the point, a demand from Novex rests on a more contested legal footing than a demand from a registered society — though the existence of an argument on authority does not remove the infringement exposure that unlicensed use can carry. That being said, notices issued by Novex should not be taken lightly and Novex does file lawsuits.

IPRS. IPRS is a registered copyright society and administers the musical and literary works — the composition and lyrics — rather than the recording. Because that is a distinct right, an IPRS demand generally stands on its own footing and is not answered by holding a PPL or Novex licence. For most venues that play recorded film music, the two layers are separate rights.

However, in most reported cases, for playing songs, notices are usually issued by just PPL, Novex and RMPL.

A licence on the sound-recording side does not cover the composition. The two rights are distinct — and so are the two demands.

What the Pass Code and related judgments established

The clearest recent illustration is Phonographic Performance Ltd. v. Pass Code Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., decided by the Delhi High Court on 9 January 2026. Pass Code, which operates well-known pubs and bars, had been paying ad hoc licence fees into court under an interim arrangement while the suit proceeded. Relying on Azure Hospitality, it argued that PPL — then still unregistered — could not charge above RMPL’s regulated tariff, that on RMPL rates it had in fact over-paid, and that it was entitled to a refund of the excess.

The Court continued the interim payment arrangement pending final decision rather than dismissing the demand — the Supreme Court’s stay in the Azure appeal is confined to the parties in that case, and the rate dispute is itself the subject of a pending application. The wider significance lies in the direction of travel: courts have been treating the regulated-tariff argument seriously, keeping refund claims alive, and declining to endorse a private collector’s figures at the interim stage.

An important qualification. None of this amounts to a settled, universal rule. The Supreme Court’s clarifications in the Azure appeal make clear that its interim orders bind only the parties to that suit, and the core question of authority for the unregistered period remains sub judice. What the case law provides is a set of arguments and a direction of travel — not a guarantee — and how they apply turns on the identity of the claimant, the period of use and the repertoire involved.

The factors that tend to shape these disputes

Reported decisions and the structure of the Act suggest that a handful of factors recur in music-licensing disputes involving venues. They are set out here descriptively, to explain what the cases turn on rather than to prescribe any course of action:

• The identity of the claimant. Whether the body is a registered copyright society (such as IPRS or RMPL) or a private assignee (such as Novex, or PPL before June 2026) affects the authority question.
• The right being claimed. Sound recording, or the underlying musical and literary work — different bodies, different licences.
• The period of use. For PPL, use before and after 11 June 2026 is analysed differently.
• The premises and scope. The number of outlets, floor area and nature of use (background music, live performance, ticketed events) affect both liability and the applicable tariff.
• The rate against the regulated tariff. Copyright-society tariffs are intended to be transparent and published under the Copyright Rules, 2013; the case law has compared demands against them.
• Records and the manner of payment. In the reported matters, whether payments were made outright, under protest or into a court-supervised arrangement has affected the availability of later refund or set-off claims.

What makes a public-performance licence complete

Separately from any dispute, the reported litigation and the statutory scheme indicate what a complete and correctly-priced public-performance licence generally addresses:

• Both layers of rights — sound recording and musical work — so that a second, separate demand does not arise later.
• Repertoire and authority — confirmation that the claimant controls the specific catalogue in use and holds the right to licence it for the relevant period.
• Rate against the regulated tariff — the fee benchmarked to the published tariff of the registered society rather than an unexplained figure.
• Scope, term and territory — number of outlets, floor area, nature of use, and renewal mechanics.
• Records and protest rights — proof of payment and, where a position is contested, preservation of any right to recover an excess.

Addressed comprehensively, a public-performance licence tends to become a predictable operating cost rather than a recurring source of legal uncertainty.

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