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Songwriter / Lyricist

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Songwriters and lyricists craft the words — and often the melodies — behind recorded music. In India this career runs along two distinct but overlapping tracks: the Bollywood / film-music track, where lyricists write commissioned songs for films and get credit on the soundtrack (earning a mix of one-time commission and IPRS performance royalties), and the indie / non-film track, where singer-songwriters write, record, and own their entire catalogue (Prateek Kuhad, Anuv Jain, The Local Train model). A third corridor — the Punjabi music industry centred in Punjab / Chandigarh and now crossing to the diaspora — operates with its own set of labels (T-Series Punjabi, Speed Records), producers, and deal structures. Entry is low-barrier: a phone recorder and a melody idea is enough to start. Commercial sustainability is the real wall — only a fraction of active lyricists break into regular Bollywood placements; fewer still build a self-sustaining indie career. Income is a severe power law: the top 50 Bollywood lyricists together earn hundreds of crores in royalties; the median working lyricist earns from irregular per-song commissions. Rights and royalties are governed by the Copyright Act 1957 (as amended 2012) and administered collectively by IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society), where a lyricist typically receives ~50% of the performance royalty for a song. The craft requires mastery of Indian poetic forms (ghazal, nazm, qawwali, doha), knowledge of prosody and metre (bahr in Urdu poetry, matra in Hindi), emotional authenticity, melodic sensitivity, and — increasingly — fluency with digital distribution and streaming royalty mechanics (JioSaavn, Wynk Music, Spotify India, YouTube Content ID).