Instagram, YouTube music use could be costing India’s music industry Rs 350 crore a year

The Indian music industry is estimated to be losing more than Rs 350 crore in sync revenue every year due to the unlicensed commercial use of copyrighted music across social media platforms, according to ContentLens, an AI-powered intellectual property protection platform.

ContentLens said the estimate is based on revenue-at-risk assessments conducted with leading music labels on its platform. It estimates that the global recorded music industry could be losing around $1 billion annually in sync revenue from unlicensed social media usage.

The company said its IP Detection Engine identifies the use of copyrighted music across social media and streaming platforms, along with timestamps and financial profiles of infringing entities. It can also detect slowed versions, remixes and unauthorised cover tracks, which can be missed by conventional audio-matching and manual search methods.


Four Indian music labels and one international major have been using the platform to detect potential infringements and recover lost sync revenue, ContentLens said. The company has now launched a managed Enforcement Service that handles the process from identification of a violation through formal notices, negotiations and settlements on behalf of music labels. Two labels have already signed up for the service, it said.

According to ContentLens, one large music label estimated its annual sync revenue at risk from social media infringements at Rs 18 crore. Based on the label's market share, the company extrapolated the potential exposure across India's music industry to more than Rs 350 crore annually, or about $40 million.

Globally, ContentLens estimates the potential annual loss at around $1 billion. The estimate is based on the $31 billion valuation of the recorded music industry, along with market-share and licensing-awareness adjustments, the company said.

“Detection without enforcement is just a filing cabinet. We spent the last year proving our technology works at scale,” said Rohan Sahu, founder and CEO, ContentLens. “Across the top 100 songs a label gives us, we detect 80-100 infringing videos every month, 98% of them clearly unlicensed. Today we are closing the loop—from formal notices to negotiations and settlements, entirely managed by ContentLens on the label's behalf.”

Hari Nair, strategic advisor at ContentLens and former CEO of Tips Music Limited, said music industry executives are aware that their catalogues are being used without permission but have lacked the tools to prove and quantify the extent of the usage and act on it.

ContentLens said its platform covers music IP protection, celebrity likeness and deepfake detection, content provenance and watermarking, and counterfeit detection. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru and is backed by the NVIDIA Inception Program and Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.