GHAMRO to ban radio, TV stations from playing music

Chairman of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO), Rex Omar, has disclosed that his outfit has the power to ban radio and television stations from playing music of its members.

Rex Omar argued that his outfit is backed by the law to ban media houses from playing members’ music if they fail to pay royalties to the collective society.

He hinted that GHAMRO is currently preparing to take legal action against some of the radio stations which have refused to pay royalties to the society.

Speaking in an interview with Mikki Osei Berko on After Hours on TV3, Rex Omar revealed that GHAMRO has already taken legal action against Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) over non-payment of royalties.

He revealed that despite the fact that GHAMRO has power to ban media houses from playing their music, it will adopt other strategies to retrieve its moneys from music users.

Rex Omar mentioned that as part of GHAMRO’s effort to collect royalties from music users, the collective society has put in place a number of measures to streamline its operation in terms of royalty collections.

“We signed an agreement with GIBA to collect the moneys from their members and pay GHAMRO but then as time goes on, we realised it is not working, so we terminated our agreement with GIBA, so now we are going on to the individual media houses for our moneys,” Rex Omar indicated.