SOUND RECORDINGS
Mechanical rights body on track with music royalties
Although mechanical royalties are diminishing, a fortune in musicians’ money has been invested to influence the market. Mechanical rights arise from the mechanical process of copying a musical or literary work onto a sound recording. Mechanical rights in SA were established in 1963 by George Hardy of the South African Recording Rights Association (Sarral) and South African Music Rights Organisation (Samro) founder Gideon Roos. Their gentlemen’s agreement was put into a contract in 1966, with Roos agreeing not to enter into mechanical rights and Hardy not to enter into performance rights. They were following an international model, led by the likes of the Performing Right Society, UK’s leading collective management organisation that administers public performance rights, and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society that administers composers’ mechanical rights. In 1970, the National Organisation of Reproduction Rights was formed as a publishers’ association, primarily representing...
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