Authorities have moved to enforce the intellectual property law by asking business establishments to pay artists’ royalties or face legal action. The target is largely business establishments playing local music who are now required to pay royalties to artistes through a collective management organisation, Rwandan Society of Authors. Understandably, the Ministry of Trade and Industry has admitted that the initiative is facing challenges largely due to the low levels of public awareness. Authorities say enforcing the law will help deal with those who attempt to frustrate the process by defaulting. It is not clear if the law will also be used to compel artistes to sign on the platform as information available indicates that many are hesitant to sign up for fear that it could reduce their popularity. Artistes figure that radio stations, television stations as well as entertainment spots could stop playing their music to avoid paying hefty sums in royalties. And that is the elephant in the room. All the concerned stakeholders knew of this but that they have pushed ahead with the law before addressing it is leaving a lot to be desired. Just how much would a single artiste ever earn in annual royalties? If the figure is not worth writing home about, then convincing them will be harder than imagined. Stakeholders behind this law need to revisit not why to apply it but how to do so. The why is a legal underpinning under the copyright law and it hardly needs any introduction, let alone awareness. It is the how that is an issue here. Just asking businesses to pay up is not enough without guaranteeing the ‘what-next” if they boycott local music. There is a lot of free music out there that businesses can turn to. Besides, most artistes think that playing their music in clubs and other places is more of a favour in this highly competitive world. What stakeholders need to do, therefore, is to sit down and chart the best way to generate revenue from works of artistes. These are supposed to be creative people, so they should be expected to come up with creative ways to earn the royalties without drawing any questionable line. For instance, is there a way artistes can have all local production placed in and under a single ‘pot’ from where all businesses seeking to use them can subscribe once and use whenever their subscription is active? The bottom line is that authorities should look at what will take the industry forward, not the law alone. The law does not operate in a void.
