Despite Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies’s satisfaction with the Copyright Review Commission’s report, the country’s music industry is still a long way from transparency and transformation. The commission was established by the Department of Trade and Industry to, among other things, assess concerns and allegations about collecting society models. "The findings or recommendations of the commission in the main are mainly negative and go against the current regime of management of collecting societies," Davies said in a recent statement. The collection society market in SA is worth about R750m a year. It is governed by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (Samro), which collects nearly two-thirds of the music market through its ownership of the performing rights of all its composer members. The other third is shared between the Composers Authors & Publishers Association (Capasso) collecting the mechanical (reproduction) rights, and the South African Music Performance R...

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