Among the various components that contribute to the success of a film, it must be said that songs also play an important role. However, times have changed and the dynamics have changed. There was a time when songs had a lot of value and lyrics were respected. This led to many movies becoming musical hits purely due to the power of songs.
Eventually, once music domination started the regard for songs got reduced. Today, one out of ten songs are gaining that prominence while the rest of the songs are routine hero introduction songs with slang words and English words. Even the depth of lyrics has become stale and the lines have become a hotchpotch of different languages.
Yet, Tollywood still has certain lyricists who stuck to their essence. Hence, they are also getting paid well for that. For instance, the senior lyricist Suddala Ashok Teja gets up to 1.75 lakh per song. It is heard that the likes of Ramajogayya Sastry, Bhaskarabhatla, and Chandrabose stand at Rs 2 lakhs per song while the rest range from 1 lakh to Rs 20,000 depending on budget of the film.
Somewhat better is those lyricists who get 30k, 40k per song but all this is as per their grading in the industry. While all this is one side, recently Chandrabose raised the value of lyrics with the song ‘Entha sakkagunnave’ for the movie ‘Rangasthalam’. He has proved that a song can elevate the aura of a movie and its business value.
With this, those who are in 2-3 lakhs bracket have shot up to Rs 5 lakhs per song. Just like how heroes are taking share in a territorial business, similarly, lyricists are also looking at share in music business along with remuneration. For Chandrabose, per song, he is reportedly getting paid plus profit from the audio business sale, he has shown that range so hats off to him. He has catapulted the power of Telugu songs and if these instances are repeated two or three times a golden era will commence for talented Telugu songwriters.