Our industry needs a lot of education – Dada Hafco

Ghanaian highlife musician, Dada Hafco, has asserted that the Ghanaian music industry is in need of a lot of education.
In a live studio discussion with Foster Romanus on the Late Nite Celebrity Show aired on eTV Ghana, he said this when he was asked whether artistes should pay DJs to have them play their song or the artistes instead need to be paid when their songs are played.
He expunged, “The DJs need the music to run their programmes and as a matter of fact, when you play a song on the radio, you’re supposed to pay the artiste. The radio needs to pay some money to GHAMRO who are the royalty collection society, and they will also pay the artiste.
The whole thing is that the DJs have been employed by an institution which is the radio station that wants to use the musician’s intellectual rights to run the station so in effect, the musician should be collecting royalties but we don’t have that system. Our system is turned upside down because I don’t know any radio station in Ghana that logs the music they play. We don’t have the monitoring system and that is why it has become the way it is”.
According to him, DJs in Western countries do not care about musicians’ money because their system works and both the DJs and musicians are given their due. He noted that musicians will get their due and DJs will also get their due if the system meant to manage and control all of that here in Ghana, was rightfully in place.
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye