The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO), Jackson Brefo, says churches are required to pay royalties for songs they use during church services.

Speaking to Kwame Dadzie on Joy FM’s Showbiz A-Z, he said the law considers churches as users of music and does not exempt them from royalty obligations.

“The law is not biased towards any entity. There is no mention of church in the law but it says that a person who intends to use the work of an author or causes the work of an author to be performed in public.

“There is a portion for fair use and that mentions educational purposes. The law never mentions churches,” he said.

Asked whether churches were complying with the payment of royalties, Mr Brefo said the orthodox denominations were the most compliant.

“Some of the orthodox churches are compliant. The bit of difficulty we face is the ‘up and coming’ charismatic and Pentecostal churches. With the orthodox churches, we are trying our best. Church of Pentecost being compliant, Assemblies of God, Methodist,” he said.

Jackson further noted that if churches are encouraged to pay their royalties promptly, it will help increase the revenue share of gospel music royalties.

Against this background, he urged gospel musicians to impress upon churches to fulfil the obligation.

This is not the first time GHAMRO has admonished the Christian community over the payment of royalties.

In July 2017, then Chairman of the organisation, Rex Owusu Marfo, popularly known as Rex Omar, said they were preparing measures to make churches pay royalties for music they used.

“Yes, we are considering that. We are putting in place the necessary measures to let churches pay royalties because they also use musicians’ intellectual property,” he made the comment at a workshop.

The issue resurfaced in March 2020, when Rex, again argued that churches should be licensed and billed for copyrighted music used during services.

Section 37(2) of the Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690), provides that “an owner of copyright is entitled to collect royalties for the live performance of the copyright work or for the public performance of the recorded copyright work.”

GHAMRO is a collective management organisation responsible for administering the rights of music rightsholders in Ghana. Its mandate includes licensing music users, collecting royalties on behalf of rightsholders and distributing those royalties.