I&B Ministry
Phonographic Digital will license & collect fees from telcos & streaming services
MUMBAI: Significant change is afoot in the Indian music industry. Almost unnoticed, a new organisation has cropped up to licence and collect fees from the various telcos and streaming services. Called the Phonographic Digital Ltd (PDL) it was incorporated in March 2017, just as the financial year was coming to a close, with its registered office in Kolkata.
Earlier, the Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), which was headed by Vipul Pradhan as its CEO, was mandated to assign licences on behalf of its Indian label members to the various telecom operators such as Airtel, JioMusic, Idea, Vodafone, and streaming services and collect royalties from them.
The PPL will continue as in the past to be a collection organisation for public performance of sound recordings from establishments, events and radio.
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Indian music industry sets up PDL, a new association for telco licensing
I&B Ministry
Prasar Bharati sets EPG standards for DD Free Dish platform
New specs define 7-day guide, LCN mapping, and device compatibility.
MUMBAI: Your TV guide just got a backstage pass structured, scheduled, and far more in sync. Prasar Bharati has released detailed technical specifications for Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) services on DD Free Dish, laying down a standardised framework for how channels and programme information are organised and delivered. At the core of the update is a defined EPG data structure, covering genre-based categorisation, scheduling formats, and Logical Channel Numbering (LCN). The aim is simple: make navigation less guesswork and more guided experience across the platform’s over 40 million households.
The specifications also introduce a seven-day programme guide window for each channel, alongside clear rules for channel grouping and LCN mapping effectively deciding not just what you watch, but how easily you find it.
On the technical front, the document outlines requirements for Program Specific Information (PSI) and Service Information (SI), including descriptor usage across tables such as PAT, BAT and NIT. It further details service lists and network linkage parameters, giving OEMs and developers a clearer blueprint for integration.
Importantly, the framework is designed to work seamlessly with television sets equipped with in-built satellite tuners, enabling users to access DD Free Dish directly without additional hardware, an incremental but meaningful step towards simplifying access.
The platform will continue to operate on GSAT-15 transponders, using MPEG-4 compression and DVB-S2 transmission standards, ensuring continuity even as the interface evolves.
While largely technical, the move signals a broader push towards standardisation and user-friendly discovery in India’s free-to-air ecosystem because sometimes, the real upgrade isn’t what’s on screen, but how easily you get there.
