Rex Omar
The Board Chairman of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO), a collective society for music composers, Rex Omar, has stated that the organisation is indeed making progress.
According to him, some of GHAMRO’s recent achievements include highest recorded royalties’ payment to its members, a new and up-to-date communication strategy, amongst others.
Speaking at the second edition of the annual National Music Summit held in Accra, Rex Omar described the recent distribution of music royalties by GHAMRO to members as unprecedented and encouraging.
“Before the last distribution, the highest money anybody has ever received from GHAMRO or COSGAH was GH¢3,400 or GH¢3,200. During our last distribution, for the first time in the history of Collective Management, we were able to distribute monies based on logs. And, for the first time, some people received GH¢30,000, GH¢20,000 and so on; this has never happened in Ghana,” he said.
He revealed that plans were underway to adapt a royalties’ distribution system which would require very little or zero human manipulation, in order to ensure fairness and efficiency in the disbursement of music royalties.
“We are looking forward to set a system which will take away human intervention. So that, when the logs come in, whatever money we have been able to collect is fed into the system and the system automatically distributes the money pro-rata and generates the statement,” he added.
He mentioned that the collective society has engaged a professional marketing team that is putting together a marketing and communication strategy.
Rex Omar also stressed on the urgent need for digital music monitoring as the only way to ensuring fair and accurate music royalties’ distribution; since it is only music which is played that can generate royalties, adding, “We have 3,116 people (members of GHAMRO) whose music is not active (being used) in the system, and they form the majority of GHAMRO. And, we also have 138 people whose music is active (in the system). Currently, we don’t pay based on the duration (of airplay) … We will get there, but it must come with a legislation.”