Seth Amponsah, GAPI Chairman
The Ghana Association of Phonographic Industry (GAPI), the umbrella executive producers association in the country, will on Wednesday, June 14 organise a one-day forum for its members and all the industry players from the southern sector of the country.
The forum which will be held at the GNAT Hall in Accra is being organised by GAPI under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Arts, with funding support from the Ghana Cultural Forum.
The forum will feature renowned professionals in the music industry who understand the importance of music as an art form and the incredible force it carries globally.
According to the national executives of GAPI, the forum will provide music publishers and other stakeholders with insight and knowledge about how music is created, effective leadership and decision-making process, copyright law, among others.
It will also deliberate on development in the music industry and help chart a collective way forward.
GAPI has been a founding member of the Ghana Culture Forum. In an interview, the chairman of GAPI, Seth Amponsah, told BEATWAVES that his outfit, in collaboration with Copyright Office and the Ghana Music Right Organisation (GHAMRO), will soon embark on a massive anti-piracy exercise to arrest all those involved in music piracy.
He pointed out that most Ghanaians do not understand copyright issues “and there is the need to educate and sensitise them in a more sustainable manner to enable them to appreciate the effects of piracy and solicit their support to reduce the canker in the Ghanaian society.”
Seth Amponsah disclosed that the anti-piracy project which is expected to take off soon would educate and sensitise the public on the adverse effects of piracy on intellectual properties and musical works, and create the necessary awareness in order to help reduce it to the barest minimum.
He added that by the end of the project, patronage of original music works and other intellectual properties would increase to about 70 percent from its present level of about 10 percent.
By George Clifford Owusu