Ignorance of producers means poverty

Most of our music producers do not realise how much they still become part of the music they produce in terms of royalties. With the coming in on the scene of modern producers there has been some movement from Cosoma, so I have heard.

Now there is a section on those forms that artists fill when registering their products with Cosoma where name of a producer is indicated.

Like I said last week, Cosoma benefits a lot from the ignorance of artists and therefore operate in secrecy. There is no knowing, how much in royalties these music producers are owed. What is even ironic is that if musical artists themselves are complaining that they are never given what is owed to them in royalties, can a producer really receive anything at all.

If Cosoma cannot release a full list of those musicians to receive royalties, can one really expect them to even have one for music producers? Or is there indeed any arrangement for producers.

Heather McDonald notes that most producers want to help make songs of artists the best they can be. In the process, he warns that a bad deal with a producer can haunt musicians for a long time.

'There could be best ways to prevent a nightmarish scenario by merely understanding how producers are compensated for their work so the musician can accurately evaluate the deal that's on the table'.

The big place to look at are in three folds: advances, royalties, and recording fees.

There is no across the board telling on how producers can get paid, but it all depends on the terms in contracts which apparently vary significantly based on the genre of the music, the bargaining power of the producer and how big or small the musician in the deal is.

Unlike in Malawi, producers in the advanced music industries have two main streams of income which is what they call advances and royalties.

A new entrant in the producing industry cannot get advances as their portfolio is in the formative stages. Most of our local producers get a per-song fee and the amount variation is influenced by many factors. One factor is when there is a label involved and if such label is local or international, independent, or a major record company.

The producer therefore, benefits from recording fees and royalties. For years Malawi's local producers like late Chuma Soko, Sir Paul Banda with his IY Studio, used to only charge recording fees. If we go to Sir Paul Banda today I pretty much doubt if he will tell me he has ever received royalties for producing numerous tracks now aplenty in the musical spaces.

The element of getting advance in the Malawi scenario comes at the back of recording fees where upon agreeing to record an album the producer can get paid 80 percent for a 12 track album when he has only produced just one song. But in industries where advances are paid, Heather says they might include the actual recording cost when producers work in their own studios which is sometimes called a fund deal.

He also says it's up to the producer to make it clear in the contract what percentage of the funds go to the advance and how much is considered a recording fee.

Now where the difference is, is 'that recording fees aren't generally recoupable against producer royalties, but advances should be recoupable or subtracted from royalties ultimately paid to the producer, just as the name suggests. Its advance money that will technically be earned later'.

He says many producers receive a percentage of an artist's royalties earned on an album which are also called "points", where one point equals 1 percent.

The explanation is that traditionally, the royalty is based on how the artist was paid, which is typically a percentage of the record’s sales price multiplied by the number of CDs or downloads sold. The record royalty to the artist is around 15 percent to 16 percent of the sales price of the audio product.

In this case Heather says the record royalty for a music producer is usually between 3 percent and 4 percent of the record’s sales price, or 20 percent to 25 percent of the artist's royalties. I wonder how it is calculated at Cosoma, if there is any at all.

The other thing is that producers are typically paid "record one" royalties which are paid for every album sold, unlike artists who only receive royalties after recording costs have been recouped.

My questions still goes to Cosoma to show us the list of royalty beneficiaries… Is it possible? And which authoritative doors can we knock on to force Cosoma to comply?