Artistes run to Mao over meagre share on caller tunes

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Norbert Mao appears before Parliament’s Human Rights Committee recently. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA. 

What you need to know:

  • They noted in the August 3 petition that although the artiste owns the content, their revenue share is only Shs12.6 or 1.8 percent, which is not commensurate with the investment.

Fifty artistes under their umbrella body the National Culture Forum (NCF) have petitioned the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Mr Norbert Mao, to intervene in the sharing of revenue resulting from caller ring back tunes (CRBTs).

They noted in the August 3 petition that although the artiste owns the content, their revenue share is only Shs12.6 or 1.8 percent, which is not commensurate with the investment.

Other members of the CRBTs value chain and their share includes government 50percent, telecoms (35percent) and aggregators 13.2(percent).

Artistes believe this rate is exploitative and that they never participated in the negotiations even when the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act empowers them to.

They want the minister to, among others, issue a statutory instrument on the sharing of revenue resulting from CRBTs by fixing artistes share at 60 percent of the gross collections, make artistes, telecoms and aggregators to each be responsible for paying their tax obligations on the resulting income/revenue

Other demands are to move CRBTs from being charged on airtime to mobile money to enable them have a fair share of resulting revenue, audit and order telecoms to pull down any CRBTs content that infringes copyright,  and empower the music society to collect any additional royalties from the telecom carriers for CRBTs content.

Some of the artistes who signed the petition include Mr Dan Kazibwe (Ragga Dee), Mr Mesach Semakula, Ms Cinderella Sanyu, Mr Hanson Baliruno, and Ms Halima Namakula.