AfriPulse
President of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA), Bessa Simons has revealed plans by the Union to ensure artistes get the optimum royalties for their craft.
Bessa Simons explained that MUSIGA intends to introduce a ‘digital store’ managed by the Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO) which will sell songs for direct monetization to artistes.
The system is expected to ensure that all copyrights issues related to artistes works are resolved and musicians get their appropriate royalties.
In an interview, he assured artistes that MUSIGA is “putting so many measures in place to make sure that there is a future for the Union.”
“For now with the copyright issues, we are behind time. The experts are saying we are behind time maybe about 200 years and so we have to catch up quickly.
What we need in simple terms is to make sure GHAMRO is working, to make sure GHAMRO is fully digital. Everybody is locked into GHAMRO. All the media houses are paying royalties to GHAMRO and once it is digital, everybody can monitor because these days we don’t sell CDs, records and pen drives. So, we have to put everything into a digital store and when the digital store sells it has to trickle down proper monetization into the account of the musician.
“And so this is what we are pushing and we cannot do this without GHAMRO and copyrights office. At the moment, there are issues we are trying to solve. There is going to be a workshop talking about it.
“Once you have your song mastered, out it into the mail, the digital system will get it round. Everybody who works on it, gets paid,” he remarked.
He underscored the need for MUSIGA to work together with artistes and in unison to deal with the numerous copyright issues.
“With our copyrights issues, if we don’t put it right now, if we make it personal it is not going to help the next generation. In Ghana, every musician is doing their own thing forgetting about their Union. Once you forget about the union the younger generation will suffer.
“…the big names we have to bring them together so that they can mentor the young ones so that we have this succession going forward,” he added.
Source: TheGhanaReport | Read the Full Story…
