THE General Manager of the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organization for Music Rights (ECCO) Steve Etienne has suggested that players in the music industry expand their horizons to earn more benefits from the business.
According to Etienne, the work ECCO does is the simplest of responsibilities within a complex and sometime perplexing music ecosystem.
ECCO licenses users of copyright music and pays writers and publishers whose music was performed in the form of royalties. That’s all ECCO exists to do and audited financial statements confirm we are getting better at doing what we do. We keep producing growth year after year that exceeds national averages.
Said Etienne: “Membership in ECCO is not a benefit membership.Benefits in the form of royalties is derived from the performances of the works that are accounted for. Therefore, it should be clearly understood that no performances means no royalties”.
It is the responsibility of the individual songwriter and/or his publisher to seek out usage of his songs in as many ways as possible, he said.
“In fact membership of ECCO is similar to that of a Credit Union, where although you are a member of the Credit Union, you do not get free money given to you, you can only draw out what you put in. Therefore, in the case of songwriter members of ECCO, if your music is performed in a licensed venue or by a licensed broadcaster you will get royalties from ECCO. If your works are not performed you will not be entitled to any royalties.
ECCO will not perform fraud by giving to some members what they are not entitled to. In fact giving free money to any member means that the members of ECCO or its affiliate societies whose musical works are regularly performed are being disadvantaged.
St. Lucia, and by extension, the people of Saint Lucia benefit from the VAT that ECCO collects. Out of every million dollars ECCO collects, $150,000 is given to the Inland Revenue in the form of VAT. Similarly in Dominica ECCO pays the Government of Dominica 15% of collections in that country, in the form of withholding tax according to the tax laws of that country.
Said Etienne: ‘Despite ECCO’s success in collecting licensing revenue, we have seen a lower percentage of national performances across the ECCO territories. It is an undisputed fact, that currently only an average of between 5% and 10% of music performed locally is written by ECCO members. Therefore, simple arithmetic will tell you that out of every $1million ECCO would distribute, only around $50,000 to $100,000 will be due to ECCOs 600 plus members, as their share of distributable revenue.
“I have to repeat, membership in ECCO is not a benefit membership. Benefits in the form of royalties are derived from the performances of works that are accounted for. Therefore, it should be clearly understood that no performances means no royalties. Similarly no documentation means no royalties. I have been advocating for years that what we should be concentrating on is building a music industry focused on exports and to promote the business of music, other than wanting to tear down the only successful pillar of the nascent music industry”.
Etienne advised that others should take a cue from ECCO and set up other components of the music industry that can take its place alongside ECCO.
He said: “This can be supported by ECCO, to do all the things that ECCO cannot do and there are hundreds of necessary components of an industry that are needed such as Musicians Associations, Promoters Associations, artist and writer development, audio visual productions etc. etc. and developing policy that can influence the creation and performance of more local content.
“ECCO should not be the only game in town. Other entities should use their areas of expertise to create critical mass and bring real benefits to all participants in the music industry.
We are hopeful that the government and people of Saint Lucia will use the strategy document produced for the country by the European firm, Sound Diplomacy, as a template for building a viable export oriented music industry. ECCO is ready and willing to play its part in this endeavour.”