UK-based Ghanaian talent manager and music publisher Mark Darlington Osae has expressed concern about the unfair treatment towards music producers by some of the country’s top musicians, especially with regard to copyright and royalties.
In a Facebook post, the manager of Skrewfaze and Reggie & Bollie claimed that certain musicians are selling their song catalogues while taking producer credits off of them.
“The way some of our big GH artistes are treating producers is bad! Producers, please monitor the credits of your songs on DSPs. There is a trend where your credits and/or split shares are being taken & songs sold or re-registered as 100% owners to 3rd parties!” he wrote.
Commenting further about his claim in an interview, he explained that producers’ entitlement goes beyond just mechanical and publishing splits and includes master rights as well.
“When a producer works on a song with an artiste, apart from the mechanical and the publishing splits that they agree on, they also have a share in master rights as well, unless the producers have sold and relinquished their rights to either the record label or the artiste. If that has not happened, they have producer points on the master recording.”
He noted that the problem partly stems from a long-standing trend in which some producers offered their beats to artistes for free in hopes of gaining exposure.
“Some of them [the producers] were not paid a penny, and to take away their rights to the songs as well is an injustice we need to talk about as an industry,” he added.
In order to recover their rights, Mark suggested that affected producers seek assistance from experts in copyright and publishing law.
