Musicians share ?150million

The Copyright Society of Ghana (COSGA) is set to make a special distribution of royalties worth ?150 million to composers and producers of music in Ghana.

The original amount of ?100 million that COSGA said would be distributed has now been increased to ?150 million to ensure that beneficiaries will not take home ridiculously low sums which might become a distinctive instead of a moral booster.

Acting Executive Director of COSGA, J.A. Larkai who dropped the hint of the increase said COSGA board had had to disburse royalties collected within the last four months from users of music other than radio stations to restore the confidence of producers and composers who for a long time have not benefited from their toil with regards to royalties.

The Acting Executive Director said the additional ?50 million was the part of the royalties which COSGA should have kept for administrative and other expenses but because of the need to inspire confidence in the major players in the industry, the Board decides to exhaust the total receipt on the disbursement.

Reckoning that one thousand composers are to benefit from the distribution, the lowest beneficiary will receive a hundred thousand cedis while those in the high bracket will take home ?270 thousand each.

COSGA was in the past, entrusted to people who knew very little about the operations of the society, insiders say and as such, a lot of its functions were left unperformed leading to serious cracks in the society.

For several years, users of musical works were not made to comply with the logging system, which computed the rate at which they use the works of various composers.

This according to COSGA insiders has created a lot of problem for the society when it comes to the disbursement of royalties. Mr. Larkai said to circumvent this problem, the board had to sit in a series of meetings with the executives of producers, composers and representatives of MUSIGA before they could agree that the beneficiaries would be paid according to the number of albums they have released.

This method, the Executive Director said, was not ideal as the practice internationally is to use the logging system.

As part of the reorganization of COSGA, new logging forms have been designed and distributed to all radio stations in the country and they use in their programmes or have their licenses to run musical programmes withdrawn.

With hotels, restaurants, spinner groups and other users of musical works, COSGA has concluded arrangements to have the concluded arrangements to have the executive of their associations collect the royalties on behalf of COSGA.