A board member of the Ghana Music Right Organization GHAMRO, Mark Okraku Mantey, revealed on GHOne’s ‘The Pundits’ on Tuesday, 29th April, 2014 that most radio and television stations don’t log songs they play; talkless of paying royalties to the right owners – musicians.
Celebrated highlife musician Amakye Dede burst out some months ago and took on the executives of GHAMRO. Amakye Dede revealed that he was paid an amount of GHC 250 as his annual royalties after many years of singing and producing hit albums.
Next was young highlife musician, Kaakyire Kwame Fosu, popularly known in showbiz as K.K. Fosu had also descended on GHAMRO for not paying him royalties. In recent times, musicians such as T-Blaze, Kwabena Kwabena, Paedae of R2Bees, and Wanlov Kobolor have also added their voice to the royalty n0n-payment chorus.
When it comes to sources for royalty payment, they are simply enormous – hotels, banks, spinners, restaurants, drinking spots, events, clubs, etc. However, most of the aforementioned avenues are in the informal sector, hence, collecting royalties from them comes with many challenges.
However, the very formal and reliable sources GHAMRO can collect royalties for musicians are television and radio stations. Meanwhile, majority of these television and radio stations in Ghana don’t pay royalties.
Any time I listen to television and or radio and hear these very radio and television presenters host musicians who are angry at GHAMRO and thus use the air space to lambaste GHAMRO or they the presenters censor GHAMRO, I ask myself, where has conscience gone to in this world?
To those television and radio stations who posit that GHAMRO has not given them any logging sheets that is why they don’t pay royalties, my question to them is, does VAT officials come to your offices every month to threaten you to pay taxes?