Save your future now! - ‘GHAMRO is lost,’ says Seven Xavier to young acts

There's no doubt that the performance of royalties collection agency, Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO), over the years has not impressed players in the music industry.

These players have always complained about such poor performance.

At a recent Music Summit held ahead of this year’s Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA), some artiste managers and industry players took advantage of the open forum to vent their displeasure with GHAMRO.

In the midst of the agitations, which sometimes end on the social media pages of critics or are rekindled at summits for players in the industry, the President of the Alliance for Change in Ghana Music, Seven Xavier, is entreating young musicians to save themselves from poverty by demanding accountability from GHAMRO.

According to him, when they are at their peak, artistes tend to give little consideration to their future because of the good financial state they may be in, only to suffer later.

“I want to tell artistes to save their future since GHAMRO is lost. As an institution mandated to collect royalties, what has it done all these years? See, artistes must save their future and when I say that, I don’t mean they should ignore GHAMRO but they should rather get more involved in what they are doing and demand accountability.

“Everybody has been brainwashed to think that GHAMRO doesn’t make money and our musicians are comfortable with the GH¢50 to GH¢100 they take but that is not right. If GHAMRO were to be truthful to industry players, the biggest song could earn about GH¢1 million. Even with the present conditions, I know that they can give GH¢200,000 to the deserving artiste for the biggest song.

“Why am I saying this? From their own annual report, it’s mentioned that their regular staff earn GH¢1,400 a month; meanwhile, a musician gets about GH¢100 to GH¢200 in royalties a whole year.

“They also spend about GH¢130,000 on board meetings and the board usually meets four times in a year. How are they able to fund all these expenses? Is it not from the same royalties they take for musicians?

“Besides, there are even companies that can monitor songs played on our airwaves, yet GHAMRO sidelines these companies thus preventing transparency,” he stated.

According to Seven Xavier, who was the manager for R&B artiste Chase, even though some artistes have been demanding for the right things to be done, most of the top notch artistes show little concern about such matters.

“I urge artistes to be interested in these things because once the buzz dies or you are not the hottest anymore, it is almost impossible to make money so they should support what we are doing.

“I look at most of them now and laugh and cringe at the same time because for artistes such as Kelvyn Boy, KiDi, Kuami Eugene, everything seems okay for now but that will not stay forever.

“Take the story of an artiste like EL who was hot a few years ago; it is not the same today. It’s a cycle where many young artistes cannot even live off their talent. You don’t need to be huge like Sarkodie or Stonebwoy to survive. Doing good music should be enough to sustain you,” he stated.

Seven Xavier told Graphic Showbiz that the goal of Alliance for Change in Ghana Music was not to discredit the work of GHAMRO but to enlighten musicians about the “ecosystem of the industry”.

“We want Ghanaian musicians to understand how things are happening around the world and how they can equally benefit from it. We can’t always be begging for alms when we have goldmines from our works,” he said.

The Alliance For Change In Ghana Music, is a collection of creative arts stakeholders who believe in creating a thriving and prosperous music industry, which will fairly reward all individuals and entities engaged in the music business in Ghana.