The Bootleg Baron

ome will say “Robber Baron” is an appropriate metaphor for T-Series, India’s largest music company. As critics point out, it’s an entity that got there by selling millions of audio cassettes for which it didn’t own copyrights; by exploiting ambiguities in copyright law. “Ji, hamaare business mein to yeh sab chalta hai,” (Sir, all this is normal in our business), a smiling Gulshan Kumar, the company’s founder, had said in an August 1997 interview.

But when 19-year-old Bhushan Kumar took over the reins at T-Series months later, the future was uncertain. The company’s street-smart founder had just been murdered. The group had stretched itself thin by diversifying into unrelated areas. Having built its fortune by sidestepping copyrights, T-Series had lost the trust of most people in Bollywood. And ironically, the piracy demon had turned on the company that had become a large-scale owner of copyrights.

Image: Vikas Khot
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