Mumbai: BMG, the world’s largest international music company outside the three ‘majors’, has struck a sub-publishing agreement for India with Turnkey Music & Publishing, one of the country’s only standalone music publishing companies.
BMG’s music publishing catalogue comprises over three million songs, made up of works by legends including George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Roger Waters, Ray Davies, Buddy Holly, Paul Anka, Diane Warren, Kurt Cobain and Chris DeBurgh as well as contemporary superstar songwriters, including Lewis Capaldi, Bebe Rexha, Kings Of Leon, Juice WRLD, and thousands of others.
Some of the greatest songs in music history are represented by BMG, such as ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ (Pink Floyd), ‘Walk This Way’ (Aerosmith), ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ (Tears For Fears), ‘Wild World’ (Cat
Stevens/Yusuf Islam) and ‘Come As You Are’ (Nirvana).
BMG also owns the publishing of catalogues including Virgin, Chrysalis, Stage Three, Cherry Lane, Primary Wave and many others, thus representing the works of varied acts such as the Human League, Jethro Tull, Billy Idol, Blondie, Lenny Kravitz, The Black Eyed Peas, John Legend and others.
Turnkey Music & Publishing represents the works of independent Indian songwriters such as Shaan, Papon, Leslee Lewis, Raghav Meattle, Louiz Banks, Rudy Wallang and Tipriti Kharbangar of blues band Soulmate, Merlyn D’Souza, Sanjay Divecha, Purbayan Chatterjee and more, apart from artiste imprints like Merchant Records of Salim & Sulaiman Merchant, Taalim of Bickram Ghosh, and Anuradha Pal’s Sur Aur Saaz.
It also sub-publishes the catalogues of Rajshri Entertainment, Shemaroo Entertainment, Ultra Media & Entertainment, SVF, Sree Devi Video Corporation, Super Audio Madras and others in the international
markets.
Since 2020, Turnkey has also been the sub-publisher in India of Kobalt Music, Fairwood Music Publishing, Big Swede Studios and Konic Records, as well as representing music production libraries such as YouTune Music and Soho Production Music.
Janet Anderson, BMG’s SVP Global Publishing Services, said, “India is an important and growing market for us and we are delighted to have found in Turnkey an independent publisher, which not only shares our values, but also brings a dynamic approach to monetising publishing catalogues.”
Atul Churamani, Managing Director Turnkey Music & Publishing, said: “We are honoured that BMG has chosen us to represent its amazing catalogue in the Indian market.”
He pointed out that BMG’s presence “will help strengthen the representation of International works in India, particularly at the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS), which is now aggressively looking to licence all users across all genres of music.”
Churamani concluded by pointing out: “BMG brings some fantastic music to the party and having worked with the team there on the ‘Jim Beam Originals’ project in 2020 and 2021, we look forward to creating some interesting and unique opportunities for the company.”
Ms Kalinga