Joe Issa’s General Theory on Monetizing Artistic Content Executive Chairman of Cool Corporation Joe Issa, who has the uncanny knack of thinking through issues did not disappoint when he was interviewed about his approach to maximizing royalties to local music. “If all else is equal then the playing field is level for all and therefore, you have nothing to do other than keep improving the quality of your music,” says Issa as he evokes the economic analysis condition of ceteris paribus. But if the playing field is not level, he says, “then you have things to do, such as identifying the problem areas and finding solutions,” stating that generally, the playing field tend to be uneven at the infancy stage, suggesting that as result very little local music is played on the radio and television. “If your music is not played on the radio and TV you can forget it, and even if it is played and you can’t monitor it you can forget that too,” says Issa, noting that the answer to the lack of airplay can be legally addressed in the same way that every media house is obligated to give free air time for government broadcasts. He says the radio and television stations can be mandated by law to allocate a certain percentage of their total music airplay to local artists for a given period of time to be reviewed for impact and change. “Only in this way will the local music be heard on the radio and played at public and private events, thus enhancing the overall maximization of revenues from royalties, enabling improvement in the quality of the music and spawning future superstars,” says Issa, who has hosted many superstars, including Usher, and Bryan
Adams who is said to have benefited from the Canadian content model which forced radio stations to play local music up to 40 per cent of the time. However, Issa cautions small states trying to develop their local music to ensure that sufficient monitoring mechanisms are in place to track 24/7 all radio and television stations and other public events at which local music is played. Equally, these outlets must be mandated to submit their records to the agency in charge of collecting royalties on behalf of the music industry. Issa says in Jamaica, where the local industry is very advanced and needs no favours, there are many radio and television stations said to be non-compliant in reporting and submitting royalty payments. This point has already been expressed by a well known industry player. “We have a culture where we are not used to honouring that obligation and a lot of people do not understand it, some don’t want to understand it. I personally think that there is about a 90 per cent of non-compliance,” says Augustus ‘Gussie’ Clarke who is a board member of both organizations JACAP which has taken over from the Performance Rights Society (PRS) and JAMMS which took over from International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).