Copyright Law and the Changing Economic Value of Popular Music in India

Using archival and ethnographic data, this study examines Indian understandings of music as intellectual property, as expressed in industrial logic and practice, in industrial, legal and public discourse and through the content of, and approaches to, the Indian Copyright Act. Those understandings were powerfully influenced by changing technology, market dynamics, and Indian relations with the world economy (after 1984). Collectively, these phenomena led to sometimes extreme changes in the nature and economic value of music commodities in India between 1970 and 2010, and, ultimately, to the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, the "Bollywood" amendments.