KARYAWAN president Datuk Freddie Fernandez met up today with MACC Chief Commissioner Datuk Seri Azam Baki and two of his senior officials, namely Deputy Chief Commissioner (Operations) Datuk Seri Ahmad Khusairi Yahya and Director of Investigation Datuk Norazlan Mohd Razali to discuss issues pertaining to music royalties and artistes’ royalties in particular.
At the meeting which lasted more than an hour, Freddie briefed the MACC team on the background of the royalties issue and how it all began with the amendment to the Copyright Act in 2000, in which performers were also given the right to equitable remuneration for the use in public of their recorded performances.
The artistes’ problems started in 2001 when instead of getting Public Performance Malaysia Bhd (PPM) to share its royalties with the artistes, they set up a body called Prism Sdn Bhd, surprisingly headed by someone who was not an artiste but a former head of an international recording company, named Datuk Aziz Bakar.
After a few years without any action, Prism Sdn Bhd finally signed an agreement with PPM in 2004 to collect royalties on its behalf. However, the results were nothing short of disappointing with artistes receiving between RM200 and RM400 per year, compared with the millions the recording companies under PPM were receiving.
When PPM cancelled its contract with Prism Sdn Bhd in 2011 due to innumerable complaints, Prism Sdn Bhd had no choice but to shut down its operations. The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, after being inundated with complaints from artistes against Prism Sdn Bhd, decided to introduce licences for collecting bodies, otherwise known as Collective Management Organizations or CMOs.
Following this, the record companies once again tried to take charge of artistes’ royalties and set up another body called Recording Performers Malaysia or RPM, with Sheila Majid as the chairman and collections done by PPM once again. This turned out to be another disaster as Sheila had limited knowledge of the running of a CMO and bungled her way through a seven-year chairmanship, where she is only now distributing 2014/15 royalties after a gap of five years.
In the meantime, Aziz Bakar emerged on the scene again, this time as advisor to another new body called Prism Bhd with Anuar Dahlan as chairman and CEO. Prism, unlike RPM, went around and started collecting royalties from user groups, resulting in a huge hue and cry from the users who complained of having to pay too many bodies.
The then-minister, Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin, once again became tired of all the complaints and introduced a single combined collection unit called Music Rights Malaysia Bhd or MRM comprising four bodies: Music Authors’ Copyright Protection (MACP) representing composers and publishers, PPM representing recording companies, and the two artistes’ bodies RPM and Prism representing performers. Hamzah had determined that the formula to distribute the money between the bodies would follow the Western societies of 2:1:1 in which MACP would get 50% of the royalties, PPM would get 25 %, and the two artistes’ bodies would share the other 25%.
There were two problems with this. Firstly it was obvious that even though members of PPM had agreed at a Recording Industry Association of Malaysia AGM to join MRM, they were not happy with getting only 25% when they used to collect a similar amount as MACP (around RM50 million each) before MRM was set up. Secondly, the two artistes’ bodies could not see eye to eye and reach an understanding of how the money should be divided between the two bodies.
In the meantime Prism Bhd had to close down due to having lost a court case with PPM. This left only RPM as the surviving body representing artistes in MRM. Prism members are completely in the dark as to who to turn to and many are looking at Karyawan to ensure they get their fair share of royalties, now that Prism no longer exists.
Until today, artistes have yet to receive a single cent of royalties from MRM whilst the other bodies on the MRM Board like MACP and PPM keep giving statements that they aren’t sure how much is due to the artistes. All MACP could say was that it was definitely not the RM30 million that Karyawan had suggested, while PPM said it was less than RM20 million without giving an exact figure. Given that these two bodies hold six of the seven seats on the board of directors of MRM, if they can’t give the right figure, God alone knows who can.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that PPM convinced the other two bodies that closing MRM down and going back to multiple bodies collecting from users would be the best thing. Strangely enough MACP agreed, even though it meant it would lose its advantage of collecting double the royalties of PPM and would probably mean that PPM would go back to collecting as much as MACP from the users. Karyawan issued a statement protesting the closure of MRM.
The users didn’t take to this well, either. Seven associations representing various users of music came up with a joint statement recently requesting the government to go back to a single collecting body. Karyawan went even further and suggested that even distribution be done by a single body.
In the meantime, artistes are still waiting for someone to give them the money that’s due to them. At first it was understood that PPM would be handling the distribution to artistes. When Karyawan protested, PPM came out with a statement criticising the move and denying they were handling the distribution. Sheila has been keeping silent all this while as the only surviving artistes’ body in MRM and has not said anything about distributing artistes’ money in MRM.
It looks like MACC has a big mess to disentangle. Karyawan will be giving its fullest support and cooperation to MACC to allow them to identify any breach of trust or corruption amongst the players in this very messy affair.
We thank the chief commissioner and his men for making the time to meet the Karyawan president this morning and we look forward to assisting the MACC wherever possible in the course of their investigations.
Persatuan Karyawan Malaysia is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to championing the rights of local Malaysian artistes
