Flash Disks Killing Our Musicians

To sell 1000 copies at a single musical show, in one night and at K2000 a copy is a feat that can translate into something else. Already, this means K2m a night and this is excluding gate, plus hire collections.

Assuming that the artist is going to perform in all the 52 Saturdays in a year, he would make K104 million in sales of their music alone.

Well, forget about this figure; this can only happen in my fantasy world. But the point I am trying to drive home is, Malawian music followers are helping the industry to drown into a quagmire of retrogression.

As we speak, right now every Jack and Jill is running some rundown music with two or a single rickety computer that is leaking out musicians’ wealth of their lifetime. And now they can do so with the blessings of Copyright Society of Malawi.

For some time now, even in the face of vehement protest from musicians themselves, Cosoma has chosen to be the issuing of soft copy licences which once gotten people can upload hundreds of albums in flash disks for sale.

For you to get the music all you need is a flash disk or a mobile phone that can take in some media and some K100 and you will get all the albums that Lucius Banda, for example, has come up with over to decades that he has been in music business.

These ‘flash disk patrons’ for one thing, are always in the forefront cursing the artists for lack of innovativeness, ingenuity and progress, forgetting that for artists to achieve such, they require resources.

If we were willing as a proud country to have our musicians reach the dizzying heights, we surely were supposed to dig deep into our pockets and patronise the work of our artists so that with our buying of their products they can be fired into some ingenious mortals who will be able to give us even better material that can stand the international test.

Ever since OG. Issah, that music distributor, stopped doing something he has only known best in his life because no soul, no longer goes before his counter to buy music. People have now found a way of getting music cheaply and without regard to its maker.

One might laugh off the decision by the distributor, but one thing you might not realise is that even patronage of music through flash disks would be snuffed if materials will no longer be forthcoming.

The musicians themselves feel the pinch that is why in every music video album our musicians produce these days, they will make sure to warn against piracy.

Much as we might gloss over such warning in the conviction that there is no system in this country to track down music pirates in earnest, one thing which has to stand out clearly is the fact that we are helping in making our music industry achieve some mediocre status. 

In the past I used to scream mad at radio stations, including the mother institution the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) which at one time equally behaved like a flash disk patron.
They would get the music through the flash disk but still fail to pay for royalties incurred because the music was being played to the public as it were.

The same was the case with entertainment joints that have our music as its heartbeat. If you remove the music it means you are getting rid of the pulsation and consequently killing it.

Owners of such places, just like owners of radio stations have realised that they can never be without music. Pity though, they have this feeling that music just comes into flash disks without deeply thinking about sleepless nights that one spent to compose the lyrics and even the accompanying instrumentation to come up with the music that brings fame to their joints.
There is something terribly wrong with a culture of getting things on a silver platter. It feels the same way as the culture of getting free lunch. It kills the spirit of discernment where you have a special place for the maker of your favourite music.

Because the moment a patron has respect for the artist who makes their favourite music, the only way to give back is when they buy – read me tight here – buying their audio compact discs or DVDs without having to let some virus infested computer empty hard earned music products into their flash disk at the expense of the maker of such music.

One other good thing is that we have our music selling at very affordable prices and there is no way anyone can claim that they can manage a music player but not the music that gives the gadget meaning for its existence. 

Copyright Act: Govt’s Wish list

Before the enactment of the Copyright Law in 2016, everything that was not happening right in the arts sector in general, and music industry in particular was being attributed to lack of such statutes.

A couple of years later, artists seem to still be at the mercy of the perpetrators of arts related offences and sins. This is so even in the presence of the law and those that are empowered by it, the Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma). 

They continue sleeping on the job and do little or nothing to enforce it.

Cosoma officials would argue their case all they want but they can only hear from me as someone who is echoing out the brutal and naked sentiments of musicians and other artists in different disciplines.

I will quickly take you to the recent matter relating to Collins Bandawe, the musician famed for his Tchekera Maluzi song. Apparently without his knowledge, two urban artistes – Saint and Macelba – decided to do a remix of the track.

When asked by the media if they had the consent of Bandawe, the duo said since Collins was nowhere to be traced they therefore sought permission from Cosoma.  

Assuming that Cosoma indeed gave them such a go ahead, then if the body’s action is not fascinating enough, then tell me what is. Because it is as good as going to the police to borrow a gun that one intends to use for a heist. 

Cosoma failed to use the very law that provide for its existence.

Copyright Act section 66 in simpler terms guides on how best this could be done. Among others one is supposed to find the original owner of the works; inform them of their intention to redo their work and even provide the address of the place at which they intend to make the recording.

It further describes the kind of work as follows: “Sound recordings made… may be in the form of an adaptation of the musical work previously recorded.”

Once this has been recorded the law guides that the original owner is supposed to be given the copies that have been made 15 days before publishing them and at least by 90 days royalties should start trickling down the original owner.

In the case above, others can argue that section 36 of the Copyright Act provides for the permitted free use of the works. However, on a number of conditions the duo did not qualify even under transient and incidental copies.

It is therefore disheartening that the society allowed all this to happen with careless abandon when they are supposed to be in the forefront promoting and protecting creativity as their sole existence suggests.

When one sits down and go through the Copyright Act what comes out clearly is that this has just become government’s wish list.

There are issues to do with Copyright Fund on section 98 of Copyright Act for example.

The law expects the society to administer this fund so that it can be used to enforce this law, promote and improve creativity and artistic skills as well as promote and preserve works which depict a cultural identity of Malawi. It further expects the society to, through the fund, pay proceeds from the fines paid for infringement of the rights under this Act.

Artists claim that they have not heard anything from Cosoma as regards this fund even when this very section expects it to conduct civic education on the same.

The question could now be, what is keeping those officials busy at Cosoma when they cannot make a sound decision on a seemingly very simple and straight forward issue.

Are the artists safe under those that are running the show at Cosoma? And what is the mother ministry doing?

    

Whither Malawi’s Royalty Collection

The Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) was established in 1992 and it operates under the 1989 Copyright Act which protects copyrights and "neighbouring" rights in Malawi.

Although the Registrar General administers the Patent and Trademarks Act, which protects industrial intellectual property rights in Malawi, Cosoma has a very central role in this aspect.

In April of 2015 I wrote that the rules that govern the World Trade Organisation (WTO) allow Malawi because it is only a less developed country to delay full implementation of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement until 2016, which is two years ago.

Government through the Industry and Trade Ministry was also working with Cosoma and the Registrar General to align relevant domestic legislation with the WTO Trips agreement with technical assistance from the Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (Aripo).

Under this arrangement Cosoma partnered with privately owned Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) to be using an electronic system that has been able to capture all musical works performed or played on the radio for the purposes of collecting royalties. At the moment I am not sure where we are now.

I also explained that there are three ways that musicians in Malawi can earn through royalty collections. Cosoma collects mechanical royalties that it gives to an artist after they record with a record company; broadcasting royalties that comes from air play of an artist’s music by a radio or TV station as well as; public performance royalties which is the money that the artist earns when his or her music is played in public places like bars, public transport system, hotels etc.

At the time Dora Makwinja, Executive Director of Cosoma explained that in the past they used to keep data on sales of music by authorized distributors especially those that they had given licenses.

She said when Afri Music Company was in the business of producing and distributing music they used to have a good database of record sales and even for others who were also in the same business because there was some kind of control.

Now, with parallel markets where musicians are also selling their own musical works, it is difficult to have a complete data of the record sales and therefore there is a huge loss of royalty collection.

Before, she said the system was beneficial to musicians like in 2009 when one musician Lawrence Mbenjere set a new record when he became the first musician to cart home money in excess of over K2.5 million in royalties.

There were also challenges in collection especially in broadcasting royalties, where some radio station including the state owned broadcaster the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) would fail to remit the royalties and at one time in 2013 MBC owed Cosoma K8 million.

The Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (Macra) announced that it has acquired a machine called Consolidated ICT Regulatory Management System (CIRMS).

Cosoma Senior Licensing Officer Rosario Kamanga had indicated at the time that CIRMS, otherwise also known as the Spy Machine would help them manage broadcasting royalties because other broadcasting institutions were neither logging the number of times they had played music of artists nor indicating at all whether they had played it or not.

With the Spy Machine in full gear it remains to be seen how these is now helping musicians in terms of royalties.

By the end of the day what is paramount is ensuring that the musicians get sweets out of their sweat. I just hope Cosoma has the answers.

When Chaponda enlists Nkasa

If Joseph Nkasa was sent by minister of agriculture,irrigation and water development George Chaponda to douse fires currently burning down his political career, then his decision to take the offer has aggravated his dying musical vocation.

Conversely, if Joseph Nkasa decided to make money by singing about Chaponda’s predicament without his acquiescence then he needs to immeasurably apologize to the politician because this has done him more harm than good.   

To keep you in the loop, Joseph Nkasa, the once upon a time befitting ‘Phungu’ has produced a song that intends to spruce up the image of Chaponda who has been embroidered in maize transactions that has been bedeviled by claims of corruption.

In the song Nkasa equates Chaponda to Joseph, one of the 12 sons of the Biblical Isaac who became a defacto ruler in Egypt after being sold there by his brothers due to his closeness to their father.

He further claims that Chaponda is paying for his mercifulness to help the hunger-stricken and that people are trying to make him lose ‘his ministry’.

Nkasa declares in the song that the stones that have been thrown at Chaponda with will accumulate to his advantage as he will use it to build a house which will make him the landlord.

In all this the meaning is that Chaponda will use the ridicule currently peddled about his involvement in the maize saga to become the leader of this country.

Anyway, my intentions are not to get the meaning out of this song but to describe the artist Nkasa who has been dubbed as the master lyricist who ingeniously uses metaphors and innuendos to craft his songs.

Of course Nkasa came on the musical scene in the late 90 but it was in the early-to-mid 2000 that he hogged the limelight with the production of his ‘WayendaWapenga’ toils.

When he materialized again with an album that had tracks like ‘Zosayina-sayina’ the acceptance of lyrical packed songs was overwhelming that apart from huge sales in 2003 he got over K1 million in Mechanical, Public Performance and Broadcasting Royalties from the Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma).

This was a huge amount of money at the time and it made him go bananas as he went of spending spree buying property including cars without thinking of how best to manage his resources.

By the time he got another cheque from Cosoma in 2009 which was close to K600 thousand, he had still not learnt a lesson on how best to manage resources.

To show that that his popularity has waned, in the December 29, 2009 Cosomapay out, it was Lawrence Mbenjere who set a new record when he became the first musician to cart home money in excess of over K2.5 million in royalties.

Nkasa’s hunt for money has led him to many places including begging and even performing with Zembani and Alleluya Bands. But all this has not brought as much money as he wants.

In between though, he almost hit gold when he started toying with politicians in earnest.

He did a track for President Bingu wa Mutharika called ‘Mose wa lero’ which helped lift his stature as a presidential candidate making Mutharika the first to achieve an over 70 percent landslide victory.

Nkasa has always claimed never to have received ‘enough’ money with the hit single. But this remains disputable because he has now gone to bed with different politicians for the sake of money.

Nkasa composed a song for the then parliamentary Speaker Chimunthu Banda when he stood for DPP Presidency, but it emerged that it was not successful at all as Chimunthu tumbled miserably.

After the Chimunthu debacle he went into an agreement with PPM’s Mark Katsonga who allegedly paid K7 million for political songs, jingles and live performances all to discredit Joyce Banda government and prop up the name of PPM’s torch bearer.

In fact media reports indicate that Nkasa signed an MOU with Katsonga to produce a five-track album – among the tracks, ‘Kulirakwa a Mphawi’, ‘Wanunkha Malawi’, ‘OpaniYehova’ – at a cost of K1,074,000.00; five promotional jingles at K500,000 and hold 93 live performances to a tune of K5,580,000 coming to a total of K7, 154, 000.

While the effectiveness of this project had not even materialised, Nkasa joined the PP ranks and did a track for Joyce Banda whom he had discredited in the other tracks.

The JB track which was first heard on her Ufulu Radio and state owned MBC presents a litany of development achievements of the President and why she would be voted to retain power.

While I can neither accuse Nkasa for his lack of ethical sense nor the politicians for taking any routes to seek vain glory, one thing that is clearly standing out is that Joseph Nkasa does not believe in what he sings.

It is therefore very difficult for Malawians to even believe in whatever messages his tracks contain, otherwise his message remains a mockery to voters. Imagine if one listens to both the Katsonga tracks and the JB song, would they really make a position based on Nkasa’s position?

No wonder Nkasa has not succeeded as a musician even when he attempted to establish his Zosayina Band because he is into musical prostitution that knows no morals. With such dearth of any guiding principles looking into one’s career, one cannot prosper in any discipline.

To prove my point, if the CSOs that are baying for Chaponda’s blood only gave Nkasa money to do a song against Chaponda, he will do exactly that unashamedly.

Cosoma is guilty as charged

It all started immediately after Gospel songbird Grace Chinga died. Her music started suffering serious piracy that the family members had to plead with members of the public to stop pirating her new songs.

Brother to the fallen talented gospel singer and composer indicated that the pirated music was selling in some places.

There was a story in the media to that effect where Grace’s brother called Joseph, pleaded with pirates to stop because they were still in mourning and that Grace left behind children, who are still in school and will need support.

In the same story, Joseph disclosed they were working hard to put his sister’s unreleased albums on the market as soon as possible and that they were currently putting resources together.

At that same time also Khathwa Aligiza, who produced one of Grace’s albums through Alimoso Studio approached Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) to assist the family.

Fast forward to this year, now Grace’s children Steve and Miracle are crying foul as they implicated Grace’s brother, this one called Davie for producing and selling their mother’s music behind their backs.

They accused their uncle of getting all the proceeds from the DVD he released unto the market unbeknownst to the family.

Steve created a WhatsApp forum which he named Grace Chinga’s music and Cosoma in an attempt to seek help because after their mother passed they had decided to keep her music alive through Miracle.

The children went on to shoot a DVD which they registered with Cosoma (Mzuzu) as a copyright protection. Cosoma promised that DVD would be protected but only to notice that there were fake DVDs with Cosoma holograms being sold in almost all music outlets.

To their utter shock and discovery, Cosoma was dealing with their uncle Davie; selling him stickers in the process authorising him to be selling the DVDs.

We get back to the same reasons the brother gave in the first incident that Miracle and her younger brother Israel are still in school and have no-one to help them.

Musicians Union of Malawi (Mum) President called Cosoma which said they are still waiting to get instructions from the family.

Cosoma Senior Licensing Officer Rosario Kamanga told the media that with regards to royalties, artists are asked to fill Cosoma beneficiary forms in which they indicate how proceeds from their works would be shared. Late Grace Chinga did not complete such a form.

What I find funny is that Cosoma which is still waiting for the family to give them guidance has already started providing holograms to the so called Uncle Davie. What part of waiting for direction from the family did I miss?

Again they say Grace did not fill up the whole form. Wait a minute...If I am going to become part of an association and the process requires that I fill some form, how is such an association going to accept my membership if I hand in a half filled form?

The explanation from Cosoma in the whole story smacks of dishonesty to one extent and incompetence or utter carelessness on another extreme. It’s sad it has the mandate to protect artists from such characters like Uncle Davie, but can’t do a good job.

In this whole fiasco, Cosoma is guilty as it comes. If you follow the story, Aligiza and the children had already talked to Cosoma against disannulling the children from getting what is due to them, but Cosoma seems to have deaf ears.