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If music royalty collection were an Olympic sport, Slim Buster’s experience might qualify as a very long endurance event.
The veteran Ghanaian musician, who has spent more than a decade based in the United Kingdom, has resurfaced with a complaint that is old enough to have its own birthday cake. According to the legendary performer, he has not received a single cedi in music royalties from the Ghana Music Rights Organisation, popularly known as GHAMRO, for more than 12 years.
Yes, 12 years.
While listeners continue to enjoy the classics that helped cement his place in Ghanaian music, Slim Buster says the royalties attached to those songs have apparently taken an extended vacation.
Speaking in an interview on Hitz FM, the singer opened up about his frustration and offered a rather unflattering account of what he believes went wrong.
According to Slim Buster, GHAMRO once embarked on an effort to modernise its systems. In theory, that should have meant better technology, cleaner records and more efficient royalty payments.
In practice, he claims, it became something closer to pressing the reset button.
Slim Buster alleged that the organisation discarded its old database instead of transferring existing records into the new system. Musicians were subsequently expected to return and register their catalogues all over again.
For an industry veteran who had already spent years building a music catalogue, the idea was understandably difficult to swallow.
Slim Buster questioned why an organisation responsible for protecting musicians’ rights would seemingly erase existing records instead of preserving them while upgrading its systems.
Faced with what he considered an unnecessarily frustrating bureaucratic process, the singer eventually chose not to continue with the re-registration exercise.
And that decision, by his account, came with a costly consequence.
His royalties were left somewhere in the administrative wilderness, while the years kept ticking.
There is something almost comical about the situation until you remember that we are talking about an artist’s livelihood. Behind every missing payment is a musician who created the work, entertained audiences and expected to receive the financial rewards attached to it.
Slim Buster’s story therefore raises a much bigger question about how Ghana’s music industry handles the financial rights of its creators, particularly veterans whose catalogues continue to generate value long after their biggest hits were released.
Twelve years is a long time to wait for anything.
For a royalty cheque, it is practically an entire musical era.
