Samro to fight for musicians’ rights

Talk has it that due to decades of decadence and almost no visibility in the proper running of the organisation, the current big shots at the helm of Samro are serious and determined about turning it into an organisation every musician should be proud and a member of.

In their quest, Samro is rumoured to be preparing to wage war with a variety of societal groups and organisations. These are entities known to benefit through the music they play without paying royalties.

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The leaked information also reveals the music body is planning to take on shebeens, or taverns. Samro plans to enforce a royalty code, which they expect all tavern owners to adhere to, or face a penalty.

Next will be the taxi industry, which Samro wants to come to a formal agreement with in order for them to become signatories of the royalty code.

Samro believes that if they receive all royalties from every song played on a public platform, such as a radio station, TV, at bars, taverns or stokvels, no musician would starve or die poor.

To achieve this, Samro has to get their ducks in a row and put an adequately managed infrastructure in place. Young people are sick and tired of empty promises that amount to nothing.

On the other side of the coin, Samro must make sure they do not alienate the very support base that holds the life and career of a musician together.It very much sounds like a Catch 22 situation.

During the lockdown, South Africans of all races have been brought face to face with the stark realities of what their forefathers went through during catastrophic historic events, such as the worldwide flu epidemic in 1918, The Great Depression in America during the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.

For many in this generation, this is the first worldwide event with similar results.

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