Commercial Court Division
when a song is bought from a writer, you would spend money,
money is also spent to pay the producer, pay for studio time, pay for
vocal training and pay for other services that enable the production
of a song. As a singer or producer you put a face on that song. If it
is a video recording, your face is put on the audio recording
whenever it is played.
In her opinion, going through all these steps costs money. PW1
testified that with proper marketing of a song to big companies like
MTN, Airtel, Mango, a song for advertisement could fetch as high as
UShs. 80,000,000/=.
He further stated that the Plaintiff had sold a song called ‘pollination’
at UShs. 45,000,000/= to SMS Media.
That it would have gone
ahead to sell other songs at UShs. 35,000,000/= each for old albums
and UShs. 45,000,000/= for the new albums but this deal fell in
when the intending purchasers discovered that the third party was
already in possession of the songs and had supplied it for purposes of
use as caller tunes.
PW1 did not produce any written evidence to validate the foregoing
sums of money but this oral evidence also remained undispelled by
the cross-examination of counsel for the Defendant and was on the
balance of probabilities, believable.
Considering the figures ranging from UShs. 35,000,000/= to UShs.
80,000,000/=, the long duration that the Defendant used the works
of the Plaintiff and also the fact that there were as many as five (5)
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