The Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) continued its commitment to empowering stakeholders in the music industry with valuable knowledge and insights during this year's music business masterclass.
The event, held at the Alisa Hotel in Accra, aimed to sensitize participants about the importance of licensing their works to enhance revenue generation.
Bringing together songwriters, record labels, artiste managers, musicians, professional music publishers, representatives from GHAMRO, film directors, production companies, and advertising agencies, the masterclass facilitated a dynamic dialogue on copyright, synchronization, and other essential topics.
Organized in collaboration with Sheer Publishing Africa, the session shed light on the significant increase in streaming revenue in Africa over recent years. This development emphasized the need to educate stakeholders on maximizing their earnings from creative works.
Madam Keeiloe Molefe, a Copyright Administrator at Sheer Publishing Africa, addressed the forum and highlighted the prevalence of young creatives in Africa who lacked an understanding of licensing their works, often resulting in them abandoning their craft prematurely. She emphasized that artists could harness the power of music by leveraging the right channels for publishing and distribution.
Drawing a distinction between music publishing and distribution, Madam Molefe stressed the importance of joining publishing platforms, which can assist artists in registering and licensing their songs. This process enables them to collect royalties rightfully owed to them.
Madam Shiro Mwendwa, Head of Creative and Licensing at Sheer Africa, focused on educating music stakeholders about synchronization music licensing. She explained that songwriters and publishers hold the rights to music and highlighted the two types of rights involved in licensing a song: master rights and composition rights.
By understanding these rights, both songwriters and musicians can generate revenue when their works are utilized by secondary parties, including excerpts and portions of their songs.
At the conclusion of the masterclass, stakeholders expressed satisfaction with the knowledge gained and expressed gratitude to Charterhouse, the organizers of VGMA, for creating this valuable platform.
