Hoopr Revolutionizes Music Licensing with AI-Powered Copyright Platform

"Technology only opens a lot more doors and it makes things a lot more accessible." This philosophy from Gaurav Dagaonkar, Co-founder and CEO of Hoopr, encapsulates both his journey from IIM Ahmedabad graduate to Bollywood music director, and now to building India's leading music licensing platform. With AI platforms like Suno and Udio generating complete songs from lyrics, and the music industry facing its biggest technological disruption since digital audio workstations, Dagaonkar is positioning Hoopr at the intersection of creativity, copyright, and commerce.

India's music licensing market bleeds Rs 10,000 crore annually due to unlicensed usage. Hoopr is fixing this gap by serving 30,000+ creators and 175+ brands, ensuring artists get fairly compensated while helping brands and influencers use music legally. The platform represents a new revenue vertical for musicians beyond live shows and streaming—synchronization licensing that could transform how artists earn from their craft.

This isn't just about licensing music—it's about building the infrastructure for how AI-generated and human-created music will be monetized in the creator economy.

From IIM Ahmedabad to Bollywood: An Unconventional Artist Journey

Dagaonkar's path defies conventional career narratives. Born and brought up in Mumbai, he engineered his way into IIM Ahmedabad in 2004 while harboring a different dream entirely.

"When I got into IIM Ahmedabad I was very clear that even when I graduate I want to become an artist," Dagaonkar recalls. In the first week when asked about career aspirations, "I was the only guy who raised his hand to say that I will become a music composer and a singer."

True to his word, he interned at Times Music during MBA to understand the music business from an artist's perspective. Those eight weeks exposed him to publishing, recording, artists and repertoire (A&R), and sales—but the artist dream persisted.

The Universal Music Breakthrough

After graduating in 2008, Dagaonkar returned to Mumbai to record his first album. The entrepreneurial hustle came naturally—he wrote to Mr. Narayana Murthy, chief guest at convocation, requesting he launch the demo album. Murthy agreed, generating significant press coverage.

After a year of struggle, Dagaonkar signed with Universal Music India. His album "College Days" featured the song "I'm Gonna Miss My College Days" which became immensely popular. "Even till today people sort of sing it at college farewells," he notes.

For 3-4 years, he performed at college shows across IITs, NITs, and engineering colleges nationwide. "It was a beautiful experience going out to perform, you know I could understand what it is to be a full-time artist," Dagaonkar reflects.

Bollywood Music Director Years

2012 marked his entry into Bollywood as a music director—but this came after intense preparation. "Across 2010, 11 and 12 I was doing nothing but studying how songs are made, what is it that separates the great songs from the good ones, how to work with producers," he explains.

His first film featured a song sung by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. From 2012 to 2017, he worked on 15 Bollywood films, collaborating with India's finest singers: "Right from Sonu Nigam to Rahat Fateh Ali Khan to Arijit Singh sang a song for me which has done very well, Shafqat Amanat Ali, KK, Shankar Mahadevan."

Alongside films, he created independent songs for YouTube and Spotify—originals, covers, mashups—working legally with music companies while also performing concerts.

The Entrepreneurial Pivot: From Artist to Founder

By 2017-18, after a decade as a full-time musician, Dagaonkar began contemplating something larger than himself. "Somewhere I started feeling that with my background of engineering, with my background of IIM and management, and now this understanding of the music industry, can I create something which is larger than myself, can I create something which helps artists, helps the music ecosystem?"

Inspiration came from batchmates like Annu Sharma of Magicpin and Ashish Fuloria of Hirect. "I used to meet them sometimes and take some nuggets of advice that if I want to build a startup, what do I need to think about," he shares.

In 2019, just before COVID, he started the first arm of today's company: Songfest, a brand solutions business. That's where he met co-founder Meghna, who brought product background. They worked with brands like Doublemint, Hike, ShareChat, and Nestle.

The realization dawned: "We realized that maybe product will be the ultimate way to go." Hoopr was born from this decade of lived experience as an artist combined with business acumen.

AI Disruption: The New Digital Audio Workstation Moment

Dagaonkar offers a unique perspective on AI's impact on music, drawing parallels to when digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and Cubase transformed music production.

"I am a firm believer that technology becomes a very big enabler over a period of time," Dagaonkar asserts. When he entered the industry (2007-2008), all music was recorded manually by 100 musicians in studios. DAWs enabled home production with plugins allowing anyone with a keyboard to play violins and guitars.

Two things happened then that are repeating now with AI:

"I'm a firm believer as an engineer that technology only opens a lot more doors and it makes things a lot more accessible. And the worries such as you know it'll change music for the worst etc. are not right," Dagaonkar states confidently.

The Lawsuit Challenge: Copyrighted Training Data

But AI in music faces a fundamental ethical challenge that Dagaonkar acknowledges directly: major labels including Sony, Universal, and India's T-Series and Saregama have sued OpenAI and others for training on copyrighted music without permission or compensation.

"The big issue which the music industry is trying to address is unless we train on all of this music, it is very hard for us to produce great results. And yet at the same time, how does the copyright owner or the musicians on whose music this was trained get fairly compensated?" Dagaonkar poses.

AI as Artist Tool, Not Replacement

Dagaonkar personally uses AI tools like Suno and Udio in his creative process. "Yesterday I was making a song and I had four lyrics and I had a chord progression in mind. If I put that in Suno, it gives me tune options. Now as an artist I get a great starting point and that helps me make my complete song faster."

He believes AI will become "absolutely hygiene and integrated in every single workflow." Many artists already use AI to accelerate song creation.

However, Dagaonkar distinguishes between AI-generated music and artist-created music through one crucial lens: the artist persona.

The Artist Connection: Why Hits Become Hits

This emotional connection between artist and audience creates sustainable success. Dagaonkar illustrates with "Aami Je Tomar" from the movie "Bhool Bhulaiyaa" (2016) which re-released and did Rs 50 crore business, with songs trending again.

"Sometimes there is another strong anchor which is the artist or the emotion behind the film or the person which in the music industry is extremely strong and which is why the hits become hits and become sustainable," he explains.

Hoopr's Mission: Monetizing Artist-Generated Music Fairly

As AI music becomes commonplace with multiple platforms (Suno, Udio, Refusion, and 3-4 others Dagaonkar knows), the competitive advantage shifts from generation to monetization.

"What will happen is if somebody like Priya does not compose music with platforms like Sunno, you will also be able to make songs. And once you do that, your mind will open up to thinking of how do I monetize this song now since I have made it," Dagaonkar explains.

"And that is exactly where a marketplace like Hoopr comes into play."

All songs created by artists with or without AI have copyright implications because "a human being played a role in it." Once copyright is established, monetization requires separate mechanisms and revenue share models—which is where Hoopr operates.

The Fundamental Problem: Awareness Gap on Both Sides

Dagaonkar identifies fundamental issues in music licensing that AI disruption has overshadowed but remain critical:

Problem 1: Artists Don't Understand Their Rights

"The artists often times—you will not believe—they themselves are not aware of the rights that they have," Dagaonkar reveals. He shares an example: an artist with 20 released songs who didn't understand what underlying works are, what sound recording copyright is, or what societies like IPRS do.

"This is the same case with thousands of artists out there," he notes. In India, 70-80% of artists have never registered their works with any copyright society.

Problem 2: Brands and Influencers Don't Understand Licensing

Equally problematic: "The people who use this music in their videos often even they are not aware that they need a license to use the music in their videos."

Dagaonkar uses the example of D2C brands creating reels daily using film songs and trending audio without valid licenses to promote branded content. They engage influencers who use unlicensed music. "Many of these times these brands and influencers are not aware that they are actually violating copyright by using music like this."

Hoopr's Solution: Education + Platform

Hoopr addresses both sides through education and its platform. "Today we have in two years since launch we've got 125 brands that are our clients and close to 30,000 influencers who are subscribed to the platform."

The message: "Whether you use music from Hoopr or anywhere else, make sure you get a valid license."

Copyright Explained: The Two Components Every Musician Must Know

Dagaonkar breaks down copyright into its two fundamental components—a distinction every musician should understand:

Component 1: Underlying Works (Composition & Lyrics)

When Gaurav and Priya collaborate—Priya writes lyrics, Gaurav composes tune, sings it—before any recording happens, the copyright law recognizes just the composition and lyrics as one copyright called "underlying works."

"When you hear the term music publishing, it usually refers only to this underlying works of composition and lyrics," Dagaonkar explains.

Component 2: Sound Recording (The Master)

When the collaboration moves to studio recording, programming additional stems, recording vocals, mixing and mastering—the final output wave file ready for Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube—creates the second copyright called the "sound recording" or often "the master."

"You'll in music often come across things like who owns the master—so when you read that they're referring to not the underlying works but the actual sound recording that happened," Dagaonkar clarifies.

The Spotify Payment Flow

Dagaonkar explains how streaming payments work: "Every time a song gets played on Spotify, Spotify pays out two sets of royalties—one royalty for the underlying works and one royalty to the master."

The master royalty goes to the music company. The underlying works royalty goes to societies like IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society), which then divides it between publishing company and author/composer.

"A lot of artists in India—I would say almost 70 to 80%—have never registered their works with any copyright society," Dagaonkar reveals.

The Agreement Problem: Handshake Collaborations

Fundamentally, copyright requires proper documentation—which is often missing in India's independent music scene.

"Typically there should be an agreement that happens between you and me saying that you are the lyrics writer, I am the composer," Dagaonkar explains. "If we decide to go to a music company, there should be an agreement between the music company and us saying okay I'm transferring my rights to the music company."

This documentation gap creates problems when disputes arise or when artists need to prove ownership in court.

Content ID: How Platforms Detect Copyright Violations

How does YouTube detect copyrighted music? Dagaonkar explains the technology clearly:

"When the song is uploaded on YouTube, YouTube creates something known as a Content ID for that particular piece of audio and that is nothing but basically you can treat it as a digital fingerprint for that particular audio which is unique to that audio."

Just like human fingerprints are unique, the digital fingerprint and Content ID for each song is unique. When someone else uploads the same audio, YouTube does a fingerprint match.

The Ranveer Allahbadia Example

Dagaonkar cites BeerBiceps founder Ranveer Allahbadia (BeerBiceps) as an example. Early in his career, unaware of copyright, Ranveer used a film song in one of his videos. The song's fingerprint matched the original, triggering a Content ID claim.

"The penalty for that is all the revenue from that video goes to now the music company. So Ranveer cannot monetize that video at all," Dagaonkar explains. With 4-5 million views, that's significant revenue lost.

"On one side it is very good because that prevents plagiarism, that prevents somebody else from exploiting someone else's content. The downside is if you make this mistake there is no way out, then you lose all the monetization."

Court Cases: How Judges Adjudicate Copyright Disputes

How do judges without musical expertise decide copyright cases? Dagaonkar explains two types of scenarios:

Scenario 1: Public Domain Cases

When a music company claims someone recreated their old song without consent, judges rely purely on copyright law. India's copyright law specifies that songs enter public domain 60 years following the death of the author/composer.

If the label can prove it's the rightful owner and the song isn't in public domain, the person who created the recreation without consent "could actually be at the risk of having to pay damages." Saregama and T-Series have both won and lost such cases.

Scenario 2: Plagiarism Cases

When someone creates a song "dangerously similar" to another—some notes different, different instruments—judges rely on independent musicologists who have undergone specialized training.

"The court often relies on the judgment of such independent musicologists. Both the songs are given to them and it is like a jury—they have to give their verdict whether they feel that the new version is a copy of the old one or not," Dagaonkar explains.

These cases are subjective and time-consuming. Sometimes people copy tunes but change instruments, or use same instruments but change tunes.

Progress: Reduced Blatant Copying

The good news: "India now in 2025 is in a lot better position than what it was in '90s or 2000s."

Dagaonkar notes that many songs from 70s, 80s, 90s, and even 2000s were "blatant copies." Thanks to Content ID and stronger copyright laws, "it has really reduced in the last 8 to 10 years. I'm not seeing copies. If at all they are copies, then they are licensed—people are buying the license."

"Gone are the days when you could just steal and get away with it," Dagaonkar concludes positively.

The Entrepreneurial Journey: Lessons from Musician to Founder

Dagaonkar's transition from artist to entrepreneur required stripping ego and past laurels. "Being an entrepreneur and taking up this journey requires you to strip yourself of any ego that you may have or any past laurels you may have achieved."

Lesson 1: Student Mindset is Essential

"The fundamentals are first—having the mindset of a student and a learner is very, very important," Dagaonkar emphasizes. He met with at least 15-20 peers doing business to understand their challenges and learnings.

"An entrepreneur has to be very humble and should have a very good support group," he advises. Some of Hoopr's investors provided support groups where founders discuss challenges and solutions.

Lesson 2: Leadership and Culture Investment

One thing Dagaonkar got wrong initially: "In the first year was not invest so much in leadership. We were just focused on making the product."

By year two, as market, sales, and marketing challenges emerged, he realized the need for strong executive leadership. "Investing time in them is a great thing an entrepreneur can do."

Lesson 3: Customer Understanding Drives Product Decisions

Hoopr didn't initially focus enough on customer conversations. "A lot of our product iterations at that time were based on our gut feeling," Dagaonkar admits.

They started sitting regularly with customers using focused questions, leading to better segmentation: understanding how nano creators use Hoopr versus celebrities like Ranveer Allahbadia, how startups post-seed round use music versus clients like Country Delight, Licious, Noise, or Zomato.

"If we don't understand each of these users well, then we'll just give them one solution thinking that it fits all," Dagaonkar warns. Customer understanding leads to conscious prioritization and focused product development.

Lesson 4: Action Over Perfection

Dagaonkar's advice to entrepreneurs: "Any entrepreneur who's watching this, despite your best efforts whether it is hiring or certain decisions you make, I think you'll go right 50% of the times, you'll go wrong 50% of the times."

But the enemy isn't mistakes—it's inaction. "Not taking action sometimes has a larger opportunity cost."

Lesson 5: Build to Give Back

Dagaonkar's motivation transcends financial exits. "Genuinely I love building for the music industry. I'm not doing it just so that our investors get a great exit someday."

"If a guy like Gaurav Dagaonkar has come after his IIM Ahmedabad and 10 years of being a music director, then what can I build which, you know, can I say tomorrow with my head held high that I changed in this music industry or I gave back to the music industry?"

"Hoopr comes from a space of truth through passion, and that sort of keeps us excited, motivated, and going every day."

The Future: AI-Powered Music Discovery

The biggest challenge in music licensing platforms is discovery—finding the right asset from thousands of options. Hoopr is building AI to solve this.

"We have 12,000 music in platform, and the process of search is the biggest pain point," Dagaonkar acknowledges. How do you describe music through prompts like "give me ding-ding music"?

Indian User Behavior: Playlists Over Prompts

Hoopr experimented with prompt-based search but discovered Indian users discover music less through text prompts and more through playlists and categorizations.

"Even in case of large organizations like Zee TV, if they are using music for promos, the editors just go to the promos playlist by default. Travel people go to travel section by default, fashion go to fashion by default," Dagaonkar observes.

AI-Powered Tagging and Recommendations

Previously manual, Hoopr's tagging now uses AI to tag music not just on mood, genre, and BPM, but on use cases: this track works for solo backpack videos, that track suits fashion glam reels.

The vision: personalized recommendations based on each creator and brand. "Basis every single creator and every single brand, the music recommendations are quite different."

Video-to-Music Matching

The frontier: allowing users to upload a video and having the system understand elements—motorcycle travel vs luxury travel, couple dance video vs guided tour of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Fort—to recommend appropriate music from the library.

Key Takeaways

Gaurav Dagaonkar's journey from IIM Ahmedabad to Bollywood music director to Hoopr founder offers crucial insights:

For Artists: AI won't replace you—it will enable you. The artist persona and emotional connection with audiences remain your competitive advantage. Focus on building authentic connection while using AI tools to accelerate creation.

For Content Creators: Understand copyright and licensing. Using film songs without licenses costs you revenue and risks legal action. Platforms like Hoopr provide legal access to quality music.

For Musicians: Learn copyright fundamentals. Register your works with IPRS. Create agreements when collaborating. Sound recording and underlying works are separate copyrights—understand both.

For Entrepreneurs: Domain expertise gives you head start. Dagaonkar's decade as musician gave Hoopr credibility and understanding. Your unique background is your competitive advantage.

For AI Builders: Technology enablers create new markets. DAWs enabled 10x more musicians. AI will enable even more creators. Focus on monetization infrastructure as AI generation becomes commoditized.

For Founders: Student mindset, strong leadership, customer obsession, and action orientation beat hesitation. You'll be wrong 50% of the time—but that beats doing nothing.

Hoopr represents the future of music monetization in the AI era. As artificial intelligence makes music creation accessible to everyone, the competitive advantage shifts to licensing, copyright management, and fair compensation. Dagaonkar's decade of living as a musician, combined with business acumen, positions Hoopr to build the infrastructure for how music will be monetized in the creator economy.

The Rs 10,000 crore opportunity is real. The question isn't whether AI will disrupt music—it's how artists, brands, and platforms will adapt to ensure creativity is compensated fairly in the age of algorithms.

About the Guest

Gaurav Dagaonkar is the Co-founder and CEO of Hoopr, India's leading music licensing platform serving 30,000+ creators and 175+ brands. A former Bollywood music director with 15 films to his credit, Dagaonkar spent a decade as a full-time musician working with India's finest artists including Sonu Nigam, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Arijit Singh, and Shafqat Amanat Ali.

An IIM Ahmedabad graduate (2004 batch) and engineering IT professional from Mumbai, Dagaonkar signed with Universal Music India in 2008, releasing his debut album "College Days" featuring the popular song "I'm Gonna Miss My College Days" that became a college farewell anthem nationwide.

His journey from corporate aspirant to chart-topping artist to music technology entrepreneur represents a unique perspective on industry evolution. Having witnessed the digital audio workstation revolution transform music production, Dagaonkar now navigates the AI disruption of music creation while building infrastructure for fair monetization.

Under his leadership, Hoopr has become India's first and leading music licensing platform, addressing the Rs 10,000 crore market opportunity while educating artists about copyright and helping brands use music legally. The platform represents a new revenue vertical for musicians beyond live shows and streaming—synchronization licensing that's creating sustainable passive income for creators.

Dagaonkar's vision extends beyond building a unicorn—it's about giving back to the music industry that gave him identity and purpose. By democratizing access to legal music while ensuring artists get fairly compensated, Hoopr is rewriting the rules of how music powers the creator economy in India's rapidly evolving digital landscape.