Two big problems over music royalties remain

 

The Malaysian Artistes’ Association (Karyawan) welcomes the effort by the government to help settle the royalties issue for artistes by year end.

That this matter has been given due attention by the government after 20 long years of turmoil is a move in the right direction and much appreciated.

However, we believe the year-end deadline to be unrealistic as the government is probably unaware of the huge task at hand in trying to identify 2,000 members of both organisations and determining the quantum of royalties to be paid to each one.

The bigger question is why the government is allowing the dissolution of Music Rights Malaysia Bhd (MRM).

The domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry is probably unaware of the huge ramifications of such a move as the bodies concerned will be going to users and unilaterally fixing their prices without regard for the burden they will be causing to the users.

We urge the government to reconsider this move or else we will have major upheavals in the industry.

MRM was set up under then domestic trade and consumer affairs minister Hamzah Zainudin after much study and thought.

The users were generally happy at having to pay just one body to cover all rights and there were no unreasonable rates charged by the management of MRM, allowing for a structured and organised royalty collection mechanism.

Now we are going back to the days of unilateral charges and this will lead to much dislocation in the industry.

The problem of two bodies representing artistes should also be resolved.

Since Prism Bhd has been shut down, we feel it best to shut down Recording Performers Malaysia Bhd (RPM) as well and set up a new body representing members of both Prism and RPM.

This is the ideal situation as so far both parties have shown a very poor record in management and disbursement of royalties.

Further, the current board of RPM, which was appointed in 2013 and has not seen much change in the line-up since then, was not initially appointed by the members of RPM but by the Recording Industry of Malaysia (RIM), which was instrumental in setting up RPM.

Karyawan hopes the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission will investigate the fiasco as we believe abuses that might have taken place over the years need to be uncovered.

Freddie Fernandez is president of Karyawan. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.