Music curator at Boomplay Yaw Dan has noted that producers in the past failed to sign any form of paper works with musicians or artistes before producing their songs due to their lack of knowledge of publishing rights.
He said what we had was the situation where musicians had to pay upfront before their works were done until the digital revolution came in.
He said with the introduction of technology and everyone able to produce, the value of producers dropped.
He told DJ Slash, host of GH Entertainment on Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm that currently, artistes don’t necessarily have to meet producers in person since they could send their songs to them and have them work on them.
He said the majority of producers lack the knowledge that producers have some benefits on the songs they produce because they do most of the works including the melodies.
Yaw Dan said: when producers create the melodies, they have the rights to publishing the song since they are the composers of the song, and the artistes should ensure they protect their publishing rights.
He said the A-list artiste in Ghana are aware that producers are entitled to music rights, but they do not allow producers in Ghana to benefit from these rights.
He added when these A-list artistes travel abroad, they abide by these things, but when they come to Ghana, they don’t implement them.
He charged the Ghana Music Rights Organizations (GHAMRO) to take up the challenge and address the issue.
The composition of songs exists in two forms i.e the composition (underlying melody, lyrics, and music) and the sound recording (also known as a ‘master’, it is the recorded version of the composition).
These properties have rights, and persons who own them can decide who can use them and how.
Chris Tsormanah commenting said the issue, has exposed the unprofessionalism in our industry and how some creatives don’t regard other creatives.
To him, this has opened the floodgate for a wider discussion, and we should not limit this to Shatta and OMG alone.
He said we need to put things in place to ensure both the musician in a producer benefit from their creative works.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com
