They say the Indian copyright law is a sticky subject. The composer may be entitled to his share of the royalty. Performers have their own copyrights as per law. Many copyright lawyers felt that Ilayaraja’s position was untenable.

Everybody was confused about who owned the song. This created a huge controversy, and it was time for the Tamil music industry to discuss how royalties should be shared between musicians, lyricists and singers. SPB had to stop performing songs composed by Ilayaraja. There was a wave of shock when he served a legal notice on singer SP Balasubrahmanyam (SPB), who has given a huge number of hits with the composer when he was performing concerts in the US. The composer also filed cases against karaoke apps, TV, FM channels, film director Shankar (of 2.0 fame) and whoever he thought had wronged him. He managed to get injunctions against several companies from using his music. They had sold the music rights to other companies illegally. The Echo Recording Company, with which producers of various films had entered into agreements, had not paid him royalty. In 2010, he lodged a complaint with the Chennai police that a private firm had commercially exploited his music without his knowledge. His complaint is that he has not received his rightful dues and has been cheated over royalty payments.

The composer has been highly litigious in the past few years, fighting for the rights over his music. He continues to be worshipped by his fans, who are legion, and who refer to him as the maestro. He brought freshness into film music, provided hits constantly till he slowed down with the arrival of AR Rahman and a slew of new composers. He is possibly the world’s most prolific composer, having composed over 7,000 songs, provided film scores for more than 1,000 films, and performed in more than 20,000 concerts. Ilayaraja came into the Tamil film industry in 1976, and became its demigod.

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