French ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Anne-Sophie Avé has expressed strong interest in helping Ghanaian artistes to collect their music royalties.
The collection of royalties for the players in the Creative Arts industry, particularly musicians, has over the years been a challenging effort for the collection institution.
The Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO), established with responsibility to collect and distribute royalties on behalf of authors/composers and other right owners, is saddled with lots of difficulties in executing their duties.
The Creative Arts players, once again musicians, have bitterly complained about they not receiving their royalties and seemingly have stopped pursuing it since there appears to be little to no hope in getting the royalties.
In an exclusive interview with astute broadcaster and host of Okay FM's drive show "Ekwanso Dwoodwoo, Gilbert Aggrey, popularly known as "Abeiku Santana", the French Ambassador indicated, as part of her immense contributions to the growth of Ghana's Creative Arts industry, she is negotiating to have an effective French system of collecting and distributing royalties adopted in Ghana.
According to her, there is a publisher in her country, France, which "collects on the one hand all the royalties from any institution, shops, radio, digital platform that provides and displays music and on the otherhand, all the artistes register their songs and the list of people who have contributed to creating that song, beat makers, lyrics and everything and then they make sure that people get the royalties for the music when it's displayed and proportionally as it is displayed", so she is going to ensure that GHAMRO and this French publisher work in tandem to "in the first place, try and get royalties from digital platforms...So, [it will go through] it's quite a long-term project. It's not done overnight".
Explaining why she is so keen to help build the country's Creative Arts sector, H.E Anne-Sophie Avé stressed "it's about trying to tell the artistes there are ways and means of getting your royalties because your music is not only played in Ghana. It's played in digital platforms and everywhere in the world".
"So, really, we are very much willing to help so that there is some system put in place so that they can get royalties from what they are doing here in Ghana", she added.
The French Ambassador has won the hearts of Ghanaians due to her active participation and interest in Ghanaian activities and helping to make the nation, particularly the entertainment industry, better.
She has organized various activities and concerts in Ghana and France where she has showcased and keeping showcasing Ghanaian talents in order to foster international relations between talents from France and Ghana.
Noted for her affable relationship with local artistes and all Ghanaians, H.E Anne-Sophie Avé has gained a Ghanaian name; she is affectionately called Akosua.
