Leading member for the creative committee of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Highlife musician, Rex Omar, has reiterated the party’s willingness to lay down better plans for creatives’ intellectual property.
“Right now, the issue of collective management organisations is not about the organisations themselves. It is about the enforcement of music users paying for what is right.
There is no law that stipulates how much every music user (ie media houses) must pay based on duration. That is the issue. So for example if Multimedia has played 100,000 minutes you cannot say just because they have played such number of times they should pay such an amount times 100,000 minutes. So we are [currently] using flat rate,” Rex Omar mentioned on Joy FM.
According to him, the royalty system in Ghana has been defective due to the absence of a law that will stipulate the exact amount of money to be paid for people’s intellectual property.
At Joy FM’s Manifesto Debate on Creative Economy, he said his party will make sure the law is passed if voted into power.
Rex Omar therefore intimated that this problem will be solved if the National Democratic wins power after the December 7, 2024 elections.
“We saying that when the NDC comes to power, we will come out with a legislation to be clear as to how much a music user must pay. That is what happens all over the world,” he said.
The copyright office of Ghana is represented by three collective management organisations: Ghana Music Rights Organisations (GHAMRO), Audiovisual Rights Society of Ghana (ARSOG) and CopyGhana which caters for the literary creatives.
