Yo Yo Honey Singh Documentary’s Music Supervisor on Labels, Budgets and Clearances

In December last year, Netflix released Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, a documentary about the famed hip-hop/pop artist, directed by Mozez Singh and produced by Oscar-winning producer Guneet Monga’s company Sikhya Entertainment.

Seasoned music supervisor Alick Sethi – with over 20 years of experience in the field – says he was brought on board even before the documentary makers considered a composer for the score and songs to be used in the film. To that end, Sethi and his company Retox Music negotiating the usage of and licensing for 30 songs and 23 music videos for Famous in what he calls the “most complex and intense licensing project.”

Sethi says in a statement, “We scoured references and ideas to build the concept of a score that would be emotive and universal, modern and cinematic, appealing to a wider audience than his core fanbase, because this is a story of almost unbelievable highs and lows.” At the end of it, Sethi has come out seeing more faith in the music supervision role and its importance in filmmaking in India. He says, “I’ve found a challenge, which I enjoy, in showing the market that the music supervisor role brings value, efficiency, creativity, and a greater connection of the soundtrack with the story, in any kind of film project.”

Working with editor Deepa Bhatia, Sethi says he vowed to obtain the rights to every song they wanted to use to tell the journey of Singh as he rose to fame and suddenly disappeared from the limelight. The big challenge, then, was talking to labels like T-Series, Zee Music, Times Music and others who owned the rights to the artist’s songs, for licensing. Sethi says it wasn’t like a scripted film project where “if a song is not working from a creative, practical, or budgetary point of view, it can be replaced.” He adds, “In a documentary about a musician or an artist such as Honey Singh, certain songs are absolutely indispensable.”

He didn’t want to come back to the documentary makers with a ‘no,’ and Sethi had time on his side to “develop and maintain conversations” with the labels. “I think that time allowed us to show them who we are and that we are for real and we are treating Honey’s story with compassion, empathy and honesty and that putting these songs in the film would benefit everybody,” the music supervisor says. He particularly credits Netflix, Sikhya Entertainment and their legal counsel Neo Juris.

The price quotes from labels to license the songs and music videos, Sethi admits, “can be very random.” He provides an example and says, “This artist is dealing with a costly divorce, this song has done really well in sync so it sets a benchmark in the owner’s mind, this song did not perform well when released so flexibility is given, etc. There are too many variables, mostly based on human factors.” Yet, the important thing for Sethi is to treat these details “purely transactional,” He adds, “Indian labels, in terms of how they quote and ask for money, operate in a similar way to western labels, just with less experience of sync.”

While Sethi can’t really go into the budget he was allotted to gain the rights to the songs we hear on Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, but does note that spending on sync for documentaries and unscripted films is often much less than what’s allocated to “scripted entertainment.” He adds, “If any reader wants to be a music supervisor, thinking that life will be great and they will have big budgets to license and compose whatever they want, then please stay away from this profession! Often, in fact nearly always, we have to make more from less. We have to be magicians, psychologists, negotiators, motivational speakers, indefatigable, sometimes even stubborn pests.”