Bollywood lyricists unite, demand credit on streaming platforms
Some of the best-known Hindi film songwriters, including Varun Grover, Swanand Kirkire, Neelesh Mishra and Anvita Dutt have come together for a unique music video, thereby urging music streaming platforms to grant them proper credits. The video and the song, dropped by Varun on Thursday, has been titled Credit De Do Yaar (Please give us credit). Here's more on this.
In the video, shot by 15 lyricists at their respective homes, they can be seen crooning the quirky and heartfelt song. The track has been penned by Kausar Munir, Varun, and Swanand, who has also lent his voice to it. The music has been composed by Chinmayi Tripathi and Joel Mukherjii. Meanwhile, Varun has directed the video.
Other lyricists who featured in the video are Hussain Haidry, Puneet Sharma, Raj Shekhar, Manoj Muntashir, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Abhiruchi Chand, Mayur Puri, Sameer Anjaan and Kumar. "Tinka tinka pankh utha ke, dil ka pura chunk utha ke, humne daav lagaya tha, ek nanha geet banaya tha... shabd hi geeton ka hai saar, band karo ye atyachaar," the singers can be heard saying.
The lyricists have opened up about how music companies and streaming platforms fail to properly credit songwriters. They added that no streaming platform currently has algorithms to allow searching songs based on writers' names. "Currently, no music streaming apps/platforms have any algorithm of prominently displaying lyrics credits or making a song searchable by lyrics writer's name (sic)," the YouTube video description read.
Toward the end of the video, Varun, who won a National Award for best lyrics for his song Moh Moh Ke Dhaage, addressed viewers. He said, "This was a small effort for a big issue. We aren't under any false impression that you would remember our faces but please make sure you remember our names, because the fight after all is about the names."
"We just want them to properly credit us for our songs. And we want you all to join us in this issue, in whichever way possible. Whenever you find the name of a lyricist missing, please raise your voice and support us," he added.
The video has come shortly after lyricists came forward to criticize streaming companies for not crediting them for their work. Earlier, Swanand, who has written popular songs such as Bawara Mann and Behti Hawaa Sa Tha Woh, took to social media and shared screenshots of various music albums across streaming platforms, noting how names of lyricists were missing from all of them.
Sharing screenshots of music albums from popular Hindi films such as Lagaan and Omkara, Swanand asked, "If names of legends like Shailendra, Javed Akhtar and Gulzar have not been included, then who are we?"
Popular Bollywood music composer Pritam also supported the cause. He said, "(I) have been saying this for a long time in interviews. Content creators should be mentioned first before anything otherwise new generation will only want to become singers and quality of music will deteriorate." "Lyric writers are never mentioned. Why so? (sic)" he asked.
