?300m royalties for Ghanaian musicians

THE Copyright Society of Ghana (COSGA) has began disbursing 300 million cedis worth of royalties to 650 Musicians and composers in Ghana. Plans are also underway to pay out a further 50 million cedis to producers.

The amount represents royalties collected by COSGA over the second half of 2002. The lowest beneficiary will receive 400,000 cedis while the highest pay-out is a little over one million cedis.

Speaking to Showbiz in an interview last week Monday, the Acting Executive Director of COSGA, Mr J.A. Larkai said composers in the various regions have already been paid whereas in Accra, the exercise is on-going. He said the targeted one billion cedis to accrue from the collection of royalties by December this year was not realised due to the refusal of certain radio and TV stations to comply with COSGA’s directives.

Mr Larkai said the amount being paid were those collected from only three radio stations and one TV station namely Joy FM, Peace FM, Radio Univers and TV3, as well as those collected from about 40 per cent of the hotels and restaurants countrywide.

He said new logging forms distributed to radio stations across the country to facilitate the logging of music used in all musical programmes received a low response from the stations. Mr Larkai said the collection of royalties by the Ghana Hoteliers’ Association on behalf of COSGA has also not been very successful because some hotels and restaurants throughout the country have not registered with the association.

He said already, 20 legal suits have been prepared against organisations which failed to submit royalty returns to COSGA by the end of August 2002. “We are prepared to go that far to get station managers prosecuted for non-compliance, since it is a criminal offence under LI (Legislative Instrument) 1527 not to submit returns to COSGA” he said.

Mr Larkai said COSGA is still facing the challenge of having to distribute royalties based on number of albums released by composers and producers, rather than on the popularity of the work and the frequency of its use. He said the logging system, which computes the rate at which works by various composers are used, is the internationally accepted system of paying royalties and would be vigorously enforced next year.

Mr Larkai said COSGA has established structures to enable it pay royalties three times during 2003—March, July and December—and also set up a Health Insurance Scheme with a percentage of the royalties. Mr Larkai said over 500 ghost names, which represented about half of the official list of composers on COSGA’s register have been deleted, adding that as from next year, royalties would be paid through the banks to facilitate the process.

He said the collection of performer’s (actors, dancers etc.) and mechanical rights which gives performers between 7 and 15% of each work sold, would also commence next year.