In India, "The industry norm [for royalty payments from streaming services to music labels] is Rs 0.10–0.15 per stream. That varies company to company, sometimes it’s Rs 0.10, sometimes Rs 0.12 or Rs 0.15; once it even went up to Rs 0.18, I heard," Tips Music's Managing Director Kumar Taurani said. This is among the first clear indications that has been made public of how much money exchanges hands between music streaming services and record labels for such deals. This was part of an interview MediaNama did with Taurani about the company's deal with streaming service Gaana that fell through. An edited and translated version of the interview (from Hindi), where Taurani discusses why the deal didn't get renewed, follows. MediaNama: Gaana put out a statement saying there are too many upfront minimum guarantees you are asking to renew Tips's streaming deal. What do you have to say about that? Actually the timing is bad. Because of this pandemic, maybe minor business can go here and there. But I feel that people are staying home, and OTT services are getting a decent push. But there are mixed reports, some people say that business has grown, some say that it has suffered, by 10 or 15%. Some say there’s 25–28% growth has happened. Various kinds of reports are coming. Unfortunately, our deal with Gaana was expiring in between the pandemic. Sometimes what happens is when you already have a lot of problems, you may not want to give a label its…
