The Eastern Caribbean Collective Organization for Music Rights (ECCO) has been making steady progress since its formation in 2009 following the change of its name from Hewanorra Musical Society with its mandate limited to St. Lucia. ECCO’s territory of administration since January 2009 covers the entire OECS member states.
Two months ago ECCO made a distribution of more than $400,000 in respect of General and Broadcasting royalties. General royalties are royalties collected from small users such as hotels, bars, restaurants, offices, shops and stores and similar establishments. Broadcasting royalties come from Radio stations, Television stations and Cable systems.
The royalty distribution that the society has made in early September is very important to ECCO’s own members as it relates to royalties collected at live events where the proportion of local music performed is significant. These events include the CPL cricket matches played in St. Kitts, the various carnival related events in the islands, as well as marquee events such as the World Creole Music Festival and Jazz and Creole in Dominica.
It should be noted that the lion’s share of royalty collections have come from Dominica and St. Lucia, the islands in the OECS with the highest level of copyright compliance at the present time.
ECCO is expected to make two other distributions – one in October that is expected to be in excess of EC$400,000.00 and a distribution in December for jingles and/or background music in advertisements that have been aired on the radio and/or Television. The Jingles pay-out will be particularly beneficial to ECCO’s own members since a large portion of music used in advertising is created by the society’s members.
Because of the very high level of consumption of foreign music by the electronic media in the region, particularly from the Anglo-American repertoire, approximately 90% of distributable revenue is paid to American and British songwriters through their respective copyright societies – ASCAP and BMI in the United States and PRS for MUSIC in the United Kingdom.
Good for you all! You all better start playing your own Cadence, then the likes of Chubby will earn some money!
Well… dominicans need to play dominican music in jingles…
So McCarthy Marie has been making all these noises just to collect money for Americans and Englishmen? He will drain fellow Dominicans for the sake of foreigners just so he can collect a few pennies for himself.
I was a big supporter but now a bit on the fence. What do you say to folks who now think that ECCO is just a front for ASCAP and BMI to collect for Beyoncé and Snoop and Elton John?
then you need to call your local radio stations and request local music… these djs think that’s what the people want, hence that is what they are playing…. we need a HUGE education drive to get residents to understand in a very basic and general way the business of music… we must support our own!!!! and local music does not have to be limited to bouyon and cadence… we can make our own RnB, EDM and pop songs… check out Pieces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lZ3iON3-c) by Jade and Lyrique… heared it playing on Vibes Radio I was so stoked!!! and Mel’s Touch Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB-q_ulgRI8) is another great one… they are all collaborations but the point is these artists also stand to benefit from royalties.
I certainly Agreed!