The Hon. Minister of Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Gloria Akuffo has renewed the operating Licence of the Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO) for another five (5) years.
With the renewal of its operating Licence, GHAMRO is poised to implement its 4-Year Strategic Plan approved at its recent Annual General Meeting held at the KNUST, Kumasi.
The Board Chairman of Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO), Rex Owusu Marfo aka Rex Omar and twelve (12) other executives were officially sworn into office for the next four years during the 2nd Annual General Meeting of GHAMRO.
He said the certificate of Approval for Collective Management Organization for (GHAMRO) has been approved by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Hon. Gloria Akuffo.
Rex Omar promised the musicians that the next four years of their tenure in office will see an improvement stakeholders royalties. He also called for a good welfare scheme for the musicians and hopefully a private insurer and GHAMRO will increase the money paid when a member passed away
“We have taken the telcos to court and we cannot continue to sing for multinationals to take us for granted”, he added.
He promised the musicians that the new GHAMRO will distribute royalties twice in this year and the first will be by the middle of August. Rex Omar also added that they will establish savings and loans for musicians before their four year term ends.
The Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO) was established under section 49 of the Copyright Law, Act 690 of 2005 and regulated under L.I. 1962 of 2010 to collect and distribute royalties accruing to authors and owners of copyright and neighbouring rights.
Like all other copyright societies, GHAMRO is a non-profit corporate body (limited by guarantee) and therefore all fees collected are distributed among the right owners whose works have been used, in this instance composers, authors and producers, publishers in proportion to the use made of their works.
GHAMRO is duly authorized by written assignments and affiliated to composers’ societies all over the world through the execution of reciprocal representation agreements with Societies outside Ghana whose works Ghana protect under treaty and other international treaties. In this way, GHAMRO authorizes all those societies to administer the music of Ghanaian composers and authors in their particular countries. Conversely, GHAMRO administers in the territory of Ghana, not only the music of its Ghanaians members, but also the great store of music in the repertoires of all those other societies – in other words, the music of over 1,000,000 composers, authors, publishers and producers in some 150 countries.
In this way GHAMRO renders an invaluable service to the users of music in Ghana. GHAMRO makes the music user’s task very simple, for a single and very moderate annual payment, GHAMRO issues a licence authorizing the licensee to use any music in the world-wide repertoire which it represents. Having made that single payment each year, the licensee is secured in the knowledge that GHAMRO holds him covered, and that he can perform in public any music in GHAMRO’s list without fear of being sued for infringement of copyright
