Telcos Are Cheating Musicians On CRBTs

Information gathered by 18newspaper.com discloses that telecommunication companies in the country are making huge income from musicians indirectly from their CRBTs (Caller Ring Back Tones).

CRBTs as explained by an expert in the field is the color ring tones people get to hear when they are waiting for a call to be answered by the other person.

In a chat with managers of some musicians in the country about their opinion on this CRBT from the telcos, they angrily revealed that their artistes are not making anything from these color rings or CRBTs.

Manager of Konfi, a hip life group in Ghana said he had to cancel his artiste’s CRBTs with all the telecommunication companies because it is a big cheat.

‘Every time we hear these companies sponsoring entertainment events and they portray that they are trying to help these artistes but trust me, from experience, they are rather making money off the artistes and the artiste are not making junk’, Konfi’s manager agitated.

He maintained: ‘if an artiste gets a 20,000 downloads from color rings, you will be shocked to know that, that particular artiste will only receive less than a GH¢1000, why?’

The answer is simple, a telecommunication network who does not pay for the artiste recording his songs, does not promote that particular song for the artiste, is taking 65% of the downloads money and the rest of the percentage is shared between the artiste and his content provider. Now tell me if that makes a business sense, you can ask all the artistes who are using these CRBTs and they will tell you their horrible experiences, they are losing big time but who are you to complain.

He noted: ‘sometimes the money given to the artiste per month is so small or shameful to the extent that, you have no choice than to leave your money to grow for three months and even that three months all you get is pee nuts, how can artistes survive in this environment’.

To make the story complete, 18newspaper.com spoke to a mobile content provider with one of the companies and he explained, "we as content providers only charge a certain percentage from what the artiste is gaining after the telecommunication network has taken its 65%, hence what the manager is saying in a way is very true."

He also added, "the painful part is, the artiste and us (content provider) only make money from all first time downloads only, any other download after that goes directly to the network, what can be more painful than this."

Example is, if a song from an artiste will be on CRBT for 20 years, the artiste only gets to make money from the first downloads, after that, any other download within the 20 years goes to the telecommunications hence they make all the money.

All efforts to get a rep from any telecommunication network for a reaction did not materialize, but we are still pushing to get their part of the story, when we do, readers will hear. **