Legendary Composer Ilaiyaraaja Fights for Royalty Rights

As of October 15th, 2025, legendary music director Ilaiyaraaja has been taking legal action against filmmakers who use his compositions without authorization. Acclaimed composer M. Jayachandran has passionately voiced his support for Ilaiyaraaja's recent initiatives, underscoring the crucial need to protect composers' rights and ensure they receive fair royalties for their work.

Jayachandran, a veteran Malayalam music composer, has opened up about the struggles faced by previous music directors, such as A.T. Ummer. He emphasized that the intellectual property for a song's music should belong to its composer, even if it is given to a production house. Jayachandran further suggested that singers performing tracks on stage should provide a portion of their earnings to the lyricist or composer.

Ilaiyaraaja, being the producer for many of his own compositions, retains full rights over them. Jayachandran reiterated that Ilaiyaraaja should be the deciding authority over music rights, stating that "Ilaiyaraaja has all the rights to talk about it if someone breaches the rights." Ilaiyaraaja has recently filed suits against several films, including the Malayalam survival film 'Manjummel Boys', the Ajith Kumar starrer 'Good Bad Ugly', and Rajinikanth's 'Coolie', for using his compositions without permission.