A group of 15 lyricists from the Hindi film industry have come together to demand that music labels and companies credit them for their work. In a 3-minute video, several noted lyricists including Swanand Kirkire, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Neelesh Misra and Varun Grover have come together to say ‘Credits de do yaar’ (Give us credits).
The video was released on Varun Grover’s YouTube channel on Thursday and featured lyricists Sameer Anjaan, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Neelesh Misra, Manoj Muntashir, Mayur Puri, Kumaar, Shellee, Anvita Dutt, Swanand Kirkire, Kausar Munir, Raj Shekhar, Abhiruchi Chand, Hussain Haidry, Puneet Sharma, and Varun Grover himself. They have stated that when major songs are released on the YouTube channels of big music companies or on streaming platforms, music directors, singers, composers and even the actors in the song are always credited, but the names of the lyricists are often misspelt or just left out.
Moreover, while music streaming applications allow users to sort songs by name, singer, music composer, albums, etc, there is no option to sort by lyricists, they say.
“Currently, no music streaming apps or platforms have any algorithm of prominently displaying lyrics credits or making a song searchable by the lyrics writer's name,” they have said.
“Be it legends like Sahir saab, Shailendra saab, Gulzar saab, Javed Akhtar saab, Sameer saab or contemporary writers like Puneet Sharma, Abhiruchi Chand and others - this culture of apathy and erasure runs across generations,” they have said.
Director, music directors, and actors have voiced support for the video. Popular Bollywood music director Pritam hailed the video and said, “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.”
“Type any song lyrics in google search, 95 out of 100 times it will mention only singers, sometimes music directors are mentioned. Lyric writers are never mentioned. Why so ? I searched for song lyrics, lyricists name should appear first. @Google should get this corrected,” he added.
A few days ago, Swanand Kirkire had pointed out that popular music app Spotify does not mention the name of the lyricist.
“Shouldn’t Kal ho na ho, Rockstar, 3 Idiots, Gangs of Wasseypur, TerI Mitti (Single) have the names of the lyricists as well? You can see that there is no trace of the names,” he had tweeted, along with a picture of the songs as seen on the app.
क्या Kal ho na ho , Rockstar , 3Idiots , Gangs of Wasseypur.. TerI Mitti (Single) में Lyric Writer का नाम नहीं होना चाहिए ? आप खुद देख लीजिए नामों निशान नहीं है @Spotify बाक़ी apps के शॉट्स कल लगाऊँगा pic.twitter.com/k8fvBgvvTy
— Swanand Kirkire (@swanandkirkire) July 21, 2020