“Man se hai Mulayam,
Aur Irade Loha hai,
Irade Loha hai,
Man se hai Mulayam”
[Sing it to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”!]
After a series of long and interesting posts, we have for our readers an entertaining tidbit. As reported, the Samajwadi Party has bought rights to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. SP’s campaign song uses the catchy tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and is repurposed to promote Mulayam Singh Yadav ahead of the 2014 general elections. The song can be heard here. The song is written by Mr Yadav’s teacher Udai Pratap Singh (former Rajya Sabha MP) and is sung by Bollywood playback singer Javed Ali.
In 2009, as reported, the Congress bought exclusive rights for the song “Jai Ho” for their campaigns. Reportedly, they paid 10m rupees for the song rights. The BJP then got creative and came out with a parody of ‘Jai Ho’, called ‘Bhay Ho’!
We licensed this song to the Samajwadi Party with the permission of Billy Joel. How this song made it to UP is most fascinating and I hope that one day it can be told. The feedback from the party workers is enthusiastic and goes to show that a great tune knows no boundaries: which SP party worker has ever heard of Billy? I look forward to the day when we can license an Indian song from our catalogue for the US elections! That said, we regularly license music from our 25,000+ Indian catalogue across the world: AR Rahman, of course, but also Daler Mehndi and old Bollywood evergreens.
All these deals involve only publishing because the original master is not used; which again proves my point: there is more money to be made by exploiting the publishing rights in a separate, totally focused company. Which is what all the best music companies do.