Africa-Press – Eswatini. As local artists are topping international charts and having their music played outside Eswatini borders, there still aren’t any internal structures to help them collect their royalties.
For quite a while now, local artists have lamented the contrast between themselves and international artists and earning through their work. For artists in South Africa (SA) for example, when an artist’s song is played whether on radio or at the mall, the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) collects from businesses and broadcasters and distributes it straight to the author of the song. SAMRO is a copyright asset management society that was established to aid artists; however, it is situated in SA. Most local artists are registered under the society, but are still far from receiving what is due to them because of the lack of structures in the country.
Structures
This publication managed to get in touch with the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Society of Eswatini and asked where they were in terms of putting in place the needed structures for local artists. Among the few questions that were pased to them, was about if the society actually had a budget for artists. Samkeliso Nxumalo, Board Chairperson of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Society of Eswatini said; “The Board is fully formed. As the Board’s induction has been completed. The Board’s foundational ‘Action Plan’ has also been completed, in terms of internal structures. The main structure that the Board needed to put in place was our procurement structure. This is the structure which we will use to hire the secretariat. “Our procurement procedure was approved and adopted on Tuesday, October 4,” said Nxumalo.
He went on to say that this means that they now have a procurement structure in place. Now that this critical internal structure in place, the next step will be to hire the secretariat using the procurement procedure that has been recently adopted. He further said, the secretariat is the team of professionals who will manage and run the operations of the copyright society. “The secretariat will be responsible for registering works, setting rates, licensing works, tracking usage of works, calculating royalties dues, collecting royalties, and distributing royalties.”
According to Nxumalo, the secretariat will consist of the following key personnel: The director, the licensing officer, the documentation officer, and the royalty management officer. The recruitment of the secretariat will be conducted by a professional recruitment agency to be selected by the Board. Therefore, the plans going forward are as follows;
a) Complete the recruitment of the secretariat.
b) Training and empowerment of the secretariat.
c) Hosting stakeholder seminars to discuss and develop the systems that need to be put in place to create an ecosystem that can effectively register works, set royalty rates, licence works, track usage, collect royalties, and distribute royalties.
The Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Society was launched earlier this year, on March 16. The society is a collective management organisation (CMO), whose main role will be to represent the copyright interests of artists that will register as members of the society. The main activities of the society will include setting royalty rates, licensing copyrighted works to users, monitoring compliance of users, collecting royalties from users like the broadcasters and others on behalf of artists who are registered members of the society, and distributing those royalties to the relevant artists. However, before the society can begin collecting royalties from users like broadcasters and others on behalf of registered members, there are three critical phases that need to be conducted.
Nxumalo further said “As you can see from the phases listed above, there is a lot of preparation and groundwork that needs to be achieved before the society can begin to collect and distribute royalties to artists. We are currently in phase II of the ‘roll out’ process. It is our anticipation that Phase II will be completed by the end of the current financial year,” said Nxumalo. He went on to say that the bulk of phase III and phase IV will be carried out in the second financial year. Therefore, the copyright society will not be collecting royalties from any users this financial year. This financial year, the society will be focused on hiring the operational staff, training and empowering the operational staff, and conducting awareness drives as well as engagement campaigns with stakeholders.
Royalties
The copyright society was also questioned on whether they had set-up a budget for royalties to be given to artists who have their songs aired on radio stations? Nxumalo, on behalf of the society, mentioned that they didn’t need to have a budget because it is not how they had been established to work as a CMO. “We are not given a budget to allocate to artists as royalties. The people who pay royalties to artists are the users of artists’ works. Common users of artists works include radio stations, TV stations, retailers, entertainment establishment. A royalty is a payment that the user makes to the author (artist) for the right to use that artist’s work. Our role, as a CMO is to represent the copyright interests of registered members, which includes licensing and collecting royalties from users like radio, and distributing those royalties to the relevant artists provided they are registered members of the society,” said the chairman.
This publication spoke to a local artist registered under SAMRO, Psycholution real name Mzwandile Nxumalo. The artist said, “The delay is not a service delivery that should affect an artist and their work. The association was willingly working towards helping artists and if they win, everyone wins.” He further put anyone to task to try out what the association was doing, so that change can come faster.
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