Copyright office urged to fight music piracy

A section of the music stakeholders in the country yesterday called on the Copyright Office not to spare anybody caught pirating musical works of Ghanaian musicians on the market.

The stakeholders also appealed to the Copyright Office to embark on a massive anti-piracy exercise throughout the country to curb the increasing rate of piracy in the music industry.

In separate interviews with BEATWAVES, the stakeholders disclosed that piracy has existed in the Ghana’s music industry for over a decade with no signs of being tackled.

They added that the increasing rate of piracy has prevented several talented Ghanaian musicians who have the potential to release albums every year from doing so for many years.

According to them, the time has come for all musicians and key stakeholders in the music industry to declare war on piracy so as to save Ghana’s music industry from collapsing totally.

The stakeholders hinted that the piracy menace has reduced the average one million copies of CD sales in a year by music producers to just 10,000 in recent times, fearing for the worse.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Speech Production, Enock Agyapong, in an interview with BEATWAVES, described music pirates in the country as thieves and called for effective legal system in the country to deal with offenders.

He disclosed that the music industry has been on the decline over the last 10 years due to the negligence of laws that have to check the activities of those behind music piracy.

Enock Agyapong stressed that he is ready to fight music pirates until all intellectual property thieves are flushed out of the system and brought to justice.