How many creators were happy with this royalty?

Royalty means ownership. It is also called authorship. Many do not know. That, “There is royalty in song and music too. The creator should get it. That is the right.” In Nepal, there are people who collect millions in the name of royalty institutions, so these things are kept secret. More songs on top of that ? It is a subject that is suppressed and suppressed towards artistry. However, when the pages of history are flipped over, sometimes the hidden things are revealed.

The same is the case with the royalties of songs and music. The national poet received royalties. That is also a form of respect. The merger of music royalty organizations started from the point he got. What is this thing behind the curtain? After all, how did its effectiveness decline? What are the legal aspects? What is its jurisdiction ? How did the royalty organization, which started 16 years ago, reach the point of merger? You will know this through the guest in the dialogue of ‘Third Eye.com’.

Also, what is royalty ? What is its history ? How is it collected? How is it distributed ? How can it be made effective ? How many were distributed ? What criteria should the creator adopt to get royalty ? With these and similar questions from third eye artist Keshav Bhattarai, B. Pandey, General Secretary of Music Royalty Collection Society:

What is royalty? What is its history ?
After the Copyright Act 2059 and the Regulations 2061 made for its implementation, several attempts have been made. It was stated that the rights of the creator should be protected in the law and the royalty right of the creator is very important. However, it took 16 years to come up with that topic in practice. 16 years after the registration of an organization called Music Royalty Collection Society Nepal under the Copyright Act, this time we have created a suitable environment for sharing the royalties collected from some transports and some radios. For the first time in 16 years, it was a happy thing. However, looking at the history, for the first time in 2066, Music Nepal gave about 225,000 royalty. And, it seems that royalty collection started by collecting in the society. There is a history of giving royalty of 3 thousand 100 to Rashtrakavi at that time and starting to give royalty to the author. But this is the first time that 1 thousand 607 creators have been given at once. Some data from RBT, CRBT, PRBT open royalties! Like, my song has just been downloaded, you can see it by looking at it. Even in the intervening period of that kind of royalties, royalties were not given by many other producers except those being received from Ncell, NTC and certain producers. This year, we distributed the royalty to a large number of people.

How many creators were happy with this royalty ? Or was it just a matter of understanding ?

It is very difficult to understand. This is just the beginning. The start was delayed. It took a lot of time, 16 years of hard work, how much effort did it take ? You/our media have been listening to the complaints of how many creators have been listening to the fact that they don’t have the money to support their lives. We are seeing clearly. However, if there is a royalty arrangement, the creator would be saved from this situation. A lot of things like that happened. Even though all these things were happening, proper management was limited to paper only. Practically they were not managed. Now, little by little we have achieved a small success in managing it and from this year we have started sharing the royalties collected from the past. The creators have taken royalty. It does not have many shortcomings. There is definitely a kind of curiosity and happiness in the creators. This should be achieved in 3 months rather than every year. We have started a campaign from this year to celebrate the birthday of this institution every June 25th, so when the music royalty collection society is celebrating its birthday, the creators can celebrate the royalty by keeping it in their hands. We have put in the work plan to distribute the royalty on 25th of May every year. However, this action plan should be in 3 or 4 months.

How will the creator know about this royalty ?
In a sense, royalty is the promotion of the creator. It is a right to have. There are 2 rights within copyright, one is moral right and the other is economic right. Even within the economic rights, the right of royalty is attached to the economic rights. Article 25 of the Constitution states that a creator recognizes his own creation as equal to his house, property and land. Property rights also include intellectual property. Therefore, I can sell my property to someone, I can give it to someone to use, I have all the rights to it. That is within my financial rights. My name should always be on my creations. If you sell real estate and land, it will be in someone else’s name, but even if you buy music here, it will be in my name. Sales and distribution business is also there, but when the creation is sold, the buyer buys it, but the name belongs to the seller.

What is the difference between royalty and copyright ?
The main principle of royalty is that if someone uses the creation made by any creator in public or in mass, then he should pay royalty. Like: You go to a restaurant, pay 50 rupees and eat tea and coffee while enjoying the music. You go to a hotel and pay 500 for a beer worth 200 and drink it with music entertainment. What this means is that he should separate a small amount from the share he earned from the place where you are doing business using that song-music and give it to the creator. And, it is called royalty. It is not royalty to separate the entire share of the business. That is something to be decided by mutual agreement. In public use, when you sell tickets at a festival and use songs and music, there are passengers in the car, they dance while playing songs, and you play songs on the radio. People are listening intently at home. Royalty is the idea that creators should also get some royalty from the income they earn from such public uses.

Regarding royalty, what do you see different between Nepal and abroad ?
No matter where people and government are concerned. We believe that royalty should be paid if someone else’s creation is used. It is presented in a mature form abroad. Accordingly, it has moved forward. Basically, we understand what is being used publicly as royalty so far. Because, according to our law, royalties should be received as the regulations are used for public purposes and not for personal purposes. It is said that if a person listens to music by wearing headphones, he explains the source. But if you sit in a large place and listen to it loud, it is a public use and you have to pay royalties for it. This is the circle of the law, everyone should come within it, give to all of you, pay the creator’s royalty, help the creator, if you pay the royalty, the income of the creator is good, and then new good creations will come for you. You will be more happy.

There are many shortcomings, but one satisfactory means is that the state has looked at copyright. A law has been made and while it is being implemented, there are various shortcomings and it needs to be improved. That is the need of the moment. Because, no one comes who has everything good at once. But if the campaign to manage the creator’s royalty is carried forward with good intentions, it seems that it will be managed.

How much royalty did the creator get ?
In recent times, one creator has received up to 240,000 for our distribution. Even the lowest earning creator has received 1100. After deducting tax, you get 1100.

How many creators have not been able to believe that they will get royalties, they had to make some system! The Royalty Collection Society made some systems so that the songs they published had to be registered. After that, it was discussed how many of their creations there are, how much their contribution is, you can see how much is the contribution. Like in the song-music of the creator who is lacking in all these things, I will take one name. Suresh Chandra Adhikari is the president of my organization. Only the song was registered. 27 rupees per song was one of the many criteria. After that, if his 1000 songs were registered, he would have received 27 thousand rupees! But as only 70 songs were registered, he got only 1890. Because of that, due to the decrease in the collection of songs by the authors, some authors have received less royalties. The purpose of royalty society is to distribute royalties to artists.

How many royalty organizations are there ? Who gets royalties ?
In fact, in the context of our Nepal, there are five parties getting royalties, songwriters, musicians, singers, producers and publishers, we have a rule that these five parties should get royalties. Now, apart from the publisher, producers, songwriters, musicians and singers are getting royalties. Like now the music royalty society collects royalties from songwriters, musicians and publishers. We have also connected the publishers as we have to connect the publishers at the international level. Lyricists and musicians got royalties, we gave royalties on our behalf. The Music and Film Society collects and distributes royalties from producers. Similarly, the presenter society collects and distributes the royalties of the singers. In this way, three organizations are working together for these four aspects.

What is the mechanism for collecting royalty ?
There is no government mechanism to collect royalty. Royalty collection is not within the government machinery. Under the Copyright Act, the state has assumed that the royalty collection society is the state itself. Creators, Creators, you are your own kingdom. For example, you decide how much you will pay for playing your song, you collect the data of whose song was played where, you yourself share how much to whom and give that information to the copy registrar office directly. The music royalty collection society has been given the right to determine how much should be paid. Therefore, the government has not kept a place for you to take so much royalty. It is a situation where he has given the entire right to the creators that it is the property of all the creators and should be entrusted to them.

Akshay Kosh is standing right ?
Not related to royalty but when we came to this organization from the general meeting this year. I came in the role of a general secretary. Later, after extensive discussion and study on various standards, we found that a fund was also envisioned in it. After that, when we saw the provision of keeping 5% of the 10 million rupees distributed in the fund, we passed the matter of establishing a music royalty welfare organization through the working committee and started the fund arrangement. We will be collecting 5 percent of the royalties collected in the fund every year, and with that, we will have a program related to copyright in the next few days. Support for the operation of the organization can be provided. If the technical aspects have to be assembled, they will be given the cost. Or we have envisioned such a fund with the aim that if the creators find it difficult, they can spend there.

How to believe that royalty is transparent ?
There is not much speculation about the collection of royalties. Because, this year there may be more collection and next year there may be less collection. It may not have been possible in the previous year. Some years may even exceed the set goals. It all depends on how much the user can be satisfied with the process of collecting all these royalties. Looking at all these ways, transparency means that now we have to present ourselves in digital form, the practice of writing accounts like yesterday is disappearing now, so now it should be digitized, like those who we make members, there should be a system to go digitally to their accounts. We are preparing for such an arrangement. We have had extensive discussions on this, but for that, technicians will have a very big role and to hire technicians, we have to be able to manage their salaries and allowances. The system is not something that will be made like this. We are in this preparation, now we want to make it transparent.

Distribution of royalty after 16 years of registration ?
It’s been 16 years since it started. Therefore, where the royalty is collected and does not reach the hands of the concerned creator, it is quite natural that there will be embezzlement. Like, for five or seven years, the royalties are being collected by the transporters, the radios are paying the royalties but it is not distributed and it is not distributed due to embezzlement.

Yesterday, when I was a member of this organization, when I was outside this organization, I was also saying these things. Royalty is being collected, why don’t you share it? There was talk of sharing. When I came to the organization, my agenda was to distribute the royalties. If the creator’s royalty is embezzled, it is a bad thing. It is unfortunate, therefore, if embezzlement is like that, it had to be investigated, that’s why various types of committees were formed. When they investigated the royalty collection society, no such embezzlement was seen anywhere. After that, my first single agenda was that the amount of money in the organization should be transferred to the hands of the creator.

I managed to convince my friends in the working committee and all the members, including the chairman, passed the matter of not keeping even one rupee of the creator’s money in the creator’s royalty distribution organization and we divided the remaining money as royalty. Now, out of 1671 people, about 50 percent have already taken the royalty. The rest of the authors come to the office every day, carrying their own kind of cheques. We have kept their royalties in a separate account and no money can be used from it. That is only the royalty, it has been left, now tomorrow I will come to lead for the creator, it will be collected and distributed from a new place for other creator friends, it is not a matter of redistributing yesterday’s royalty, it has reached the creator’s hands. It has gone to the account. It has been distributed. By doing so, it is being maintained. If there is a tradition of sharing the creator’s royalty, then there will be no question of embezzlement. The accusations made by you are slowly getting on the site.