Johannesburg – The SABC is set to plunge into a near-total music blackout if one of the collecting societies succeeds to interdict the public broadcaster from playing songs of more than 38 000 artists and 6 000 record companies after a dispute over non-payment of R250-million needle-time royalties.
Popular artists whose songs will be removed from the playlist of the SABC radio and television stations include Babes Wodumo, Cassper Nyovest, Black Coffee, Kelly Khumalo, Master KG, DJ Maphorisa and Kabza de Small.
The South African Music Performance Rights Association (Sampra) are going the litigation route after the SABC ignored several letters from the organisation to pay the royalties to them.
Sampra CEO Pfanani Lishiva confirmed that their legal team was preparing to ask one of the high courts in Gauteng to interdict the public broadcaster from playing all the international and local tracks whose royalties are administered by them unless the SABC pays them royalties for the 2014-2015 and 2015 to 2016 financial years and also make commitments to pay future royalties.
Lishiva said the SABC had been paying their rival organisation, the Independent Music Performance Rights Association needle-time royalties instead of them, even though the latter did not produce evidence of artists and companies they represent.
“We have bilateral or reciprocal agreements with our international counterparts in more than 40 territories. These bilateral agreements give us the right to represent international tracks in South Africa, while our counterparts also represent South Africa tracks in their territories,” he said.
He said when they showed the SABC these agreements in 2016, the broadcaster proposed a 70%/30% split in Sampra’s favour.
Sampra rejected the proposed split as it was arbitrary and discretionary as it was not based on the SABC’s playlists SABC group executive for corporate affairs and marketing Gugi Ndima said they were ready to pay the needle-time royalties, but was unable to do so because the two collecting societies couldn’t agree on percentage split.
She said the SABC has already made an advanced payment of R20-million to both collecting societies.
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