South African musicians, especially Master KG, are elated after the Southern African Music Rights Organization (SAMRO) recently announced that the organization would receive royalties from social media platforms such as Facebook.
According to iol.co.za, SAMRO announced the great news on Wednesday.
SAMRO chairperson Nicholas Maweni said “SAMRO is pleased to announce that we have entered into licensing agreements with short-form video content social media platform TikTok, global social media powerhouse Facebook, as well as the video, streaming subscription platform Netflix, that will benefit members,”
He said SAMRO will collect the royalties on behalf of its members.
“Thanks to the conclusion of these binding agreements, Samro will be able to collect royalties on behalf of members, for all copyright-protected content that features on these platforms, with immediate effect.”
He added that it is important that SAMRO license all music users.
“This deal is going to enrich these platforms through the use of high-quality content produced by our members while at the same time broadening the scope and usage of member content…It is absolutely essential that as SAMRO we license all music users and ensure that we deliver maximum value to our members.”
The good news keeps coming in after business insider Wiseman Ngubo announced that Tik Tok has reached an agreement with the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) to pay artists royalties every time their music is used on Tik Tok.
“We are happy to have reached an agreement with TikTok in order to ensure that pan African songwriters are taken care of on the platform. With the increasing spotlight on African music, more African songwriters are poised to reach global superstar status and TikTok will play a major role in showcasing their talents to the world,” said Wiseman.
He said royalties will be calculated on a pro-rata share basis: “Streaming royalty calculations are not based on a fixed rate per stream, rather they are based on what is termed a pro-rata share of the available pool. This means, in essence, royalties are determined by one’s market share, as determined by usage, in each period.”
Most artists will be very elated especially Master KG who garnered over 1 billion views on TikTok alone not including the number of times companies used his song in the Jerusalema challenge trend.