Dar es Salaam. The Creative Industry Network Tanzania (CINT), in partnership with Twaweza, has called for the government and Copyright Society of Tanzania
(Cosota) to review the approach to the distribution of royalties to artists.They say the recent distribution of royalties excluded many groups of artists, lacked transparency and did not meet legal threshold.
“There is no transparency when it comes to the collection and distribution of royalties. This means that creators of copyrighted works have no way to understand how COSOTA is collecting and distributing money on their behalf. This leads to a breakdown of trust and can create conflict within the sector.”
This follows the recent distribution of royalties which were collected from seven radio stations by the Copyright Society of Tanzania (Cosota) on January 28.
According to statement released on February 19, Cosota distributed royalties worth Sh312 million to 1,123 artists for 5,924 works of music covering the collection period of July to November 2021.
“However this distribution violated both the spirit and the letter of the law in a number of key areas,” reads a joint statement issued in collaboration between by the artistes and Twaweza.
Because of the flaws CINT has called on the government and Cosota to urgently review the process for distribution of royalties in order to help the creative industries in Tanzania grow.
They highlighted issue such as the distribution of royalties collected between January 2019 and June 2021yet royalties were last distributed in August 2019 covering the period to the end of 2018 yet Cosota is required by law to distribute royalties at least once per year.
“In the announcement for distribution of royalties in January 2022, no mention was made of royalties collected between 2019 and 2021 and these royalties have not been distributed,” reads the statement.
The artistes also noted that in both 2019 and 2022 royalties were paid to musicians only, yet Cosota is responsible for all artists and creators of copyrighted works including films, software, visual arts, architecture and writers among others.
They also note that royalties were distributed to a sample of musicians yet the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act requires Cosota to distribute royalties on the basis of log sheets.
These, they said should be collected from across the country from a range of users of creative works.
However, in their announcement, Cosota said they had used radio logs for some musicians as a sample for the distribution.
“This is discriminatory, contrary to the law and unclear because there is no way to know how Cosota decided what royalties to distribute to whom.”
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