Since their licensing five years ago, some local commercial
radio stations have not paid artistes their royalties.
This has seen the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association
(Zimura) engaging the stations, warning that if this fails, they will seek the
courts to bar them from playing local artistes’ music.
The radio stations include Skyz Metro FM, Hevoi, 98.4FM,
Great Zimbabwe Radio station, Breeze FM and Yafm. The stations were licensed to
cover a 40km radius surrounding their locality.
Zimura executive director Polisile Ncube-Chimhini, in an
interview said there were some stations, without mentioning names, that were
paying artistes their royalties, while others were defaulting.
“Negotiations with all others are in progress and some are
paying in instalments. If negotiations fail, we’ll apply for court interdicts
to stop them (radio stations) completely from playing music,” Ncube-Chimhini
said.
Quizzed how much the stations owed, she said: “Final
figures can only be arrived at when negotiations are finalised, log sheets and
financial statements supplied.”
Ncube-Chimhini however said Star FM and ZiFM Stereo are up
to date with payments while Khulumani FM which is under ZBC is expected to send
its 2018 contribution this year.
According to Ncube-Chimhini, ZBC owes $800 000 in
royalties.
Due to the Covid-19 lockdown, there has been a rise of
online platforms that have been playing music yet some artistes whose music is
being played on these shows are not benefitting. Ncube-Chimhini said Zimura was
in talks with producers of the shows to see how the artistes can get the
royalties.
“Of late, there’s been a rise in online use of music and we
believe the Covid-19 lockdown contributed to this rise. Our licensing
department has engaged some of the online platforms, but the process was slowed
down as we’re waiting for the approval of our new tariffs by the Ministry of
Justice,” said Ncube-Chimhini.
The approval of the new tariffs will see Zimura charging
online platforms for the use of music.
“The proposed tariffs that we sent to the Ministry of
Justice are proposed charges for online use of music by owners of different
platforms. Collecting royalties from online platforms will be done after
identifying the platform and how the music is used. Thereafter, we’ll apply the
tariff depending on usage,” she said.
Zimura is a non-governmental revenue collecting society
whose mandate is to protect and promote the rights of music composers, authors
and publishers in Zimbabwe. Chronicle
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