‘Bollywood singers forced to work for free’: Abhijeet Sawant says Indian composer earns Rs 80 lakh royalty every month for 2 songs

Abhijeet Sawant has shed light on the "systemic exploitation" of Bollywood playback singers. He said while artists like Biddu earn nearly Rs 80 lakh a month in royalties from just two Western hits, Indian singers are often paid a one-time fee and denied long-term rights.

3 min readNew DelhiFeb 4, 2026 09:45 PM IST

Abhijeet Sawant talks about Indian-English composer Biddu. (Photo: YouTube/Pentarise)

With singer Arijit Singh’s exit from the world of playback singing, the debate about singers getting their fair due has never been louder. People are wondering about an industry which can’t seem to hold on to its biggest stars and worrying about the state of the artists who are many rungs lower in terms of popularity and agency. Recently, singer Abhijeet Sawant talked about the same phenomenon and whether playback singers get the right remuneration or not.

While appearing on Pentarise Studios’ YouTube channel, Abhijeet was asked bluntly by the host about the payment structure of film music. Hesitant at first, Abhijeet said, “People don’t want the singers to become bigger than the film itself. That’s why they are paid a certain amount. Musicians still don’t receive royalties for film music. So Biddu, who worked on Lafzon Mein, also did a couple of songs in the West, and he gets so much royalty payment from those two songs that he can survive his whole life on that money. We don’t even get enough money to sustain our livelihood.”

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He continued and said, “They have created a system like that. Singers are themselves greedy for opportunities, and they know that ‘if this song gets released in my voice, with some big star lip-syncing. Then I can use this song for my entire life.’ Singers themselves don’t want money, because they just want to sing the song or work with a certain producer. We accept whatever amount we get, because if we don’t do it, someone else will. We get exploited a lot.”

Even though not everyone can claim to have such a big payday on the backs of just a few songs, Abhijeet is right about Biddu. The British-English composer and songwriter produced Carl Douglas’s international hit Kung Fu Fighting and the famous Pakistani album Disco Deewane for Nazia and Zoheb. During a 2011 interview with Hindustan Times, the publication revealed that the artist still receives royalties worth 60k-70k pounds a month, which, according to today’s market, would be worth Rs 74 to Rs 84 lakh.

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