The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Correspondent
ZIMBABWEAN artistes, who are getting as little as 25 cents every time that their songs are played on the radio, face another battle with the country’s broadcasters with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation having defaulted on a payment plan that was made prior to the latest round of royalty payments.
Artistes were set to start getting their dues for 2016 airplay from the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimura) at the beginning of this month, but the proposed fees seem to be less than what artistes were expecting.
“Zimura has done a distribution for Star FM, ZiFM and general to be paid from 01 June 2018. Please note that ZBC has not paid enough funds that would enable us to do a distribution. That distribution will be done when ZBC clears its debt,” the association said in a statement to its members.
According to Zimura, only Star FM is so far up to date with its royalty payments.
“The Star FM and General Distributions are based on 2016 airplay and that of ZiFM is based on 2012 to 2014 airplay,” the statement read.
However, the disjointed and haphazard nature of the payments has not gone down well with artistes, with Zimbabwe Musicians’ Union chairperson Edith WeUtonga revealing that artistes were earning as little as 25 cent per play if they were lucky.
“Some stations give us 25 cents for every play but sometimes we’re lucky to even get that. Most of the royalty payments that we’re getting now are for royalties from as far back as 2012 and I can tell you that there’s a lot of anger and frustration among artistes. These stations would be nothing without our music yet here we are struggling to get our dues,” she said.
WeUtonga heaped some of the blame on Zimura, who she said had not informed them that the national broadcaster would not be making its payments as agreed.
“There’s no communication. We were only told of the payments in a press release on 31 May. By then it was too late to sign a petition among ourselves as artistes. The money that we’re getting now is for old royalties because they still need to clear their debt before paying what is currently owed.
“Apparently Zimura has actually known for a while that there would default on their payments so if they had told us beforehand it would have been better,” she said.
Asked about what the association planned address artistes’ grievances, Zimura administrator William Munanairi asked for emailed questions, which were unanswered at the time of going to print.
Zimura collects royalties on musicians’ behalf and pockets a hefty 40 percent of the takings, which are retained as administrative costs.
