Cover Song Licensing in India: What Independent Artists Need to Know

Cover song licensing in India works differently from the US or UK because India has a statutory licensing provision under Section 31D of the Copyright Act, which technically allows anyone to record and broadcast a cover version of a published song without tracking down the original rights holder first, as long as royalties are paid through the correct channel. In practice, most independent artists still don’t handle this correctly, because the compliance path involves royalty societies most musicians have never dealt with before. This article breaks down what actually applies to you and where a distributor that bundles licensing into the release process saves real time and money.

The short version: Indian copyright law makes cover songs easier to license than in many countries in theory, but the administrative reality — IPRS registration, royalty statements, correct song identification — is still a barrier most solo artists underestimate. Using a distributor like Globex Music, where mechanical licensing is built into the $1 release price, removes that barrier entirely.

What does Indian law actually say about cover songs?

Section 31D of the Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended in 2012) allows a statutory license for cover versions of sound recordings, provided the artist gives prior notice to the copyright owner and pays royalties at rates set by the Copyright Board (now the Intellectual Property Appellate Board framework, folded into the Commercial Courts structure). This is similar in spirit to the US compulsory mechanical license system under Section 115 of the US Copyright Act, but the administrative path in India runs through the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) for the underlying composition and, separately, through the original label or Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) for the sound recording if you’re sampling rather than re-recording.

The key distinction that trips people up: statutory licensing covers your right to record and release a new version of a song. It does not give you rights to someone else’s actual recording. If you re-record the song yourself with your own vocals and instrumentation, you’re in cover-song territory. If you use an existing recording or sample, you’re in sync or master-use territory, which is a completely different — and much more restrictive — licensing conversation.

Do you need to register with IPRS before releasing a cover?

Not directly, if you’re using a distributor that handles mechanical licensing as part of the release process. IPRS exists to collect and distribute royalties to songwriters and publishers, and its role matters most on the side of who gets paid, not on the side of who’s allowed to release the cover in the first place. When Globex Music distributes your cover song, licensing and royalty routing to the original rights holders is handled automatically as part of the $1 release — you don’t need to independently contact IPRS, track down a publisher, or file a notice of intent yourself.

This matters because doing it manually in India is genuinely slower than in markets with a single dominant PRO. Between IPRS for compositions and PPL for recordings, plus the fact that many older Bollywood catalog rights are split across labels like Saregama, T-Series, and Zee Music with inconsistent digital registration, an independent artist trying to clear a cover manually can spend weeks just identifying the correct rights holder before any royalty conversation even starts.

How long does cover song approval actually take?

With automatic licensing built into distribution, moderation review for a cover song typically clears in a few business days rather than the weeks or months manual clearance can take. The bottleneck in manual licensing isn’t the law — it’s paperwork and correspondence with rights holders who may not respond quickly, especially for catalog owned by larger Indian labels that field high volumes of cover requests. A distributor that has already established the licensing relationship and rights database skips that correspondence step entirely, which is the real time savings, not just a convenience.

What does it cost to release a cover song in India through Globex Music?

A single cover song release costs $1 through Globex Music, with mechanical licensing included in that price — there’s no separate licensing fee, no annual account fee, and no per-cover surcharge stacked on top. Compare that to what the same release costs elsewhere:

DistroKid charges an annual subscription starting at $44.99/year just to maintain an account, regardless of how many songs you release.
TuneCore charges a $24.99/year base plan, then adds separate per-cover licensing fees on top, plus a 20% commission specifically on social platform monetization.
CD Baby charges $9.95 per single up front, and then keeps a 9% royalty commission on that release permanently — for as long as the song earns money.

For an independent artist in India releasing a handful of covers a year, this isn’t a marginal difference. Three covers a year through DistroKid costs $44.99 regardless of activity level. The same three covers through Globex Music cost $3 total, with licensing included, and there’s no recurring fee sitting on the account whether you release again or not.

What if the original song is in Hindi, Tamil, or another regional language?

The same statutory framework applies regardless of language, but rights holder identification can be more fragmented for regional catalog. Bollywood and major regional-label catalog is generally well-documented in rights databases, but independent regional releases, older film music, and folk-adjacent recordings sometimes have unclear or disputed ownership. A distributor’s licensing process is built to check against known rights databases before clearing a release, which is exactly the check an individual artist has no practical way to run themselves without industry-level database access.

How much can a cover song actually earn once it’s live?

Payouts from covers scale with plays across whichever of the 200+ platforms picked it up, and Globex Music pays out starting from $10 USD, so artists aren’t waiting to accumulate a high balance before seeing any return. For a market like India, where streaming consumption is high-volume but per-stream rates on platforms are generally lower than in the US or UK, a low payout threshold matters more than it does for artists in higher-ARPU markets — it means smaller, more frequent releases can still generate a payout worth withdrawing rather than sitting locked in an account for a year.

What should an independent Indian artist actually do?

Pick the song, record your own version, and release it through a distributor whose licensing is automatic and whose per-release cost stays low regardless of how many covers you put out. The statutory license framework in India already favors independent cover artists in principle; the practical friction has always been administrative, not legal. Removing that friction — IPRS correspondence, publisher lookups, rights verification — is what actually determines whether your cover goes live in days or sits in limbo for months. With no annual fee and a stable, permanent catalog once released, there’s also no ongoing cost pressure to keep releasing just to justify a subscription you’re already paying for.