Dr. Joel Isabirye
The debate on the Copyright and Neighboring Rights Amendment Bill 2025 is ongoing in Parliament, and the results of the discussions will be a reform of the act that is expected to improve its contribution to the creative sector in Uganda.
However, clause 9 is proving to be contentious.
The main issue is whether radio stations should, for example, pay musicians for their works used in airplay. In what is turning out to be a complex chicken-and-egg debate. It is important to note that many Members of Parliament (MPs) own radio stations, and so they will naturally defend what is in their interest.
This is understandable. For example, some radio station owners continue to argue that they promote musicians’ works and so should not pay for their use in their broadcasts.
Musicians, on the contrary, state that radio stations make money from their works. They argue that without their music, radio stations would not attract audiences that they sell to advertisers. Both sides have a point. However, if the issue we are discussing is copyright, then the musicians have a stronger case.
Around 2005, the musician community, through its Collective Management Organization (CMO), Uganda Performing Rights Society (UPRS), demanded that radio stations should pay for the music they play in their programmes. This sounded quite unusual to stations that had been used to musicians paying them for promotion of their music.
Except for Capital Radio Limited, whose owners came from countries where stations paying for the use of artists’ works were the norms than the exception, most of the other radio stations refused to pay.
They made the current argument that they promote musicians’ works. In response, musicians actually approached me to set up Music FM to broadcast their music and lock out all other stations from playing their songs.
Although the project never took off, and it would have been difficult to implement, it sent a strong message that musicians think their argument that their works are used by radio and television stations to make money is stronger than the argument that radio stations promote their work.
At the time, although I was deeply involved in the radio business, I supported the position of the musicians, simply because I had learnt about how the music industry worked in developed and some less developed countries, and that model assisted musicians to make maximum revenue from their work.
To be very clear: without music, it would be very difficult for radio stations to attract audiences, and in turn, it would be very challenging for the stations to attract advertisers. So, they use music to make money. Luckily, many of them agree and have actually been paying for music that they play.
In fact, they are so up to speed that they are at the stage of discussing the best rates with the music industry. It might be better to let this arrangement proceed than curtail it at this stage.
Now, after around 2005, UPRS listened to stations, which suggested that when they do not make money, it becomes difficult to pay without earning, and they preferred a revenue share. UPRS, which collects money for musicians whose works have been used in public performance (commercial purposes or for making money), embraced the idea.
So they jointly came up with a revenue share model. The challenge with this model was the underdeclaration of revenue by some stations, which led creatives to think of ways of improving their monitoring of the revenue inflows of the stations.
To go back in time, Elly Wamala, the late legendary musician, told me at his home in Kyengera that he used to receive monthly payments from Uganda Broadcasting Service (UBS), the state-owned broadcaster, which mutated into Radio Uganda and Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC).
Moses Matovu, Afrigo Band’s leader, has told me the same on more than one occasion. UBS/Radio Uganda/UBC only stopped during the turbulent years when state funding became difficult.
If this was the practice in the seminal stages of the music industry in Uganda, why not return to or maintain that dispensation, since it recognizes that works are being used for public performance and the musicians should be compensated?
Let us use a simple case study. If a radio station in Arua records a programme of another station in Tororo and airs it, and gets sponsors and advertisements for it, would the radio station in Tororo not want a share of that sponsorship and advertisement in recognition of the time, effort, and resources used to produce it?
This is the point musicians are making. They spend a lot of money on production, staff, and image costs, and when their work is used by someone who is making money, there is a need to recognize that and compensate them. They are understanding people with whom discussions can be held to amicably arrive at good rates.
Musicians may seem like just individuals with a voice, but they tend to have a vast apparatus that helps them advance their careers, and everyone in that value chain and support structure requires resources to keep those careers up and running.
Jamaican musician Shaggy, in one of his visits to Uganda, told me that whereas we see Shaggy as an individual, Shaggy is actually a band, an organization, a business enterprise.
At the time he had his manager Robert Livingstone, who was responsible for managing his career, seeking performance opportunities, doing Artiste and Repertoire work (selecting songs or even writing or co-writing songs Shaggy should sing), Shaun ‘Sting International’ Pizzonia, was his producer, responsible for making some of his hits or overseeing the production of his work with other producers.
Then he had his Big Yard crew colleagues like Rayvon and Marsha Morrison at some point, all of whom were on the meal ticket. So if such an artist’s work is used without recognizing such an elaborate expense detail, one would not understand why artists need to be compensated for the use of their works in public performance.
THEREFORE, radio stations and television stations should pay musicians for the use of their works in public performance. Private users do not have to, nor do those who fall under fair use, such as educational institutions that use the work for teaching, research, and so on.
What needs to be agreed is that the rate should be fair in recognition of the role stations play in promoting musicians, the high costs of running their business, sometimes with minimal revenue, yet with the realization that musicians should be compensated for their works.
It is in this spirit that YouTube and Spotify pay content creators whose content elicits traffic that can be sold to advertisers. What needs to be worked out between stations and musicians is the model, not the principle of not compensating artists.
Standard business practice dictates that when the cost of doing business increases, businesses adjust their pricing to match these costs. For stations that were not paying copyright-related fees, they may absorb these costs by introducing a slight increase in advertising rates.
The author is a former group Programme Director at Capital Radio Limited and a media consultant.
