Split Sheets in Ghanaian Recording Studios

Indigenous societies in Ghana practised the oral tradition for many decades as means of sonic archiving before the emergence of mechanical recording (Owusu-Poku 2021a, 2021b). The establishment of major record companies in West Africa around the 1900s, such as Gramophone, Zonophone, EMI and Decca, led to the emergence of recording studios and the recording industry in Ghana. It is worth stating that all West African recordings at the time were produced in London by the Gramophone Company under the Zonophone 3000 trademark. Consequently, this socioeconomic stride became a colonial footprint that introduced Ghanaian artistes to commercial recordings from the mid-1920s onwards. The record companies did onsite recordings locally conducted in three locations: open spaces, shaded areas and enclosed rooms/halls (Owusu-Poku 2022). The indigenes loved their music, hence the record companies made indigenous music a commercial enterprise. Decca established West Africa’s first recording studio in 1948 in Accra (Collins 2004, 2018). This company recorded and produced most of the classic highlife albums of the 1950s and 1960s. These albums encompass bands such as E.T. Mensah’s Tempos, King Bruce’s Black Beats, Stargazers, E.K. Nyame’s Guitar Band, Akompi’s Guitar Band, Jerry Hanson’s Ramblers International Band and several others.

The quest of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, for Ghanaian nationalism after independence led to the establishment of the Ghana Film Studio in Accra. As much as the studio was for film production, it also had a music recording section, which recorded several classic highlife songs in the 1960s and 1970s. Around the mid-1960s, a Kumasi-based businessman called Augustine Kwasi Badu, popularly known as A. K. Badu (1928–2006), also established Ghana’s first private-owned indigenous recording house, Ambassador Records Manufacturing Company (Ghana) Limited (ARMCGL), in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Ambassador Records also recorded many classic highlife songs as the first in West Africa (Owusu-Poku 2022). From the 1980s–2000s, many recording studios proliferated due to technological advancement and the high rate of many individuals’ desires to become artistes. This development has also led to the establishment of more home studios with just a computer and recording software. As for issues of remuneration of music practitioners for record productions over the years, Nketia (1955, p. 196) states as follows:

This remuneration policy appears to have been maintained throughout the country’s commercial recording scene’s developmental stages until today. However, Ghanaian music producers and practitioners only receive a one-time premium for their services from their clientele presently. This remuneration caters to their creative ideas and extra artistic or creative tasks, including performing either as a vocalist or instrumentalist during a record production. Therefore, it is quite surprising that the split sheet, one of the essential means by which a creative artist benefits as part of the royalties that the creative work generates as commercial merchandise, is yet to gain industry and academic discourse in Ghana.

Sources of revenue generation in the music industry are of prime concern to creative artists. Often, one hears an author of a creative work firmly asserting that I created everything in this work, so I own it entirely. Here, we refer to the author as the person who wrote the song’s lyrics and melody. This assertion could be valid if it is a painting work solely executed by the artist, without any other person’s contribution or getting any idea from another person, which was utilised and significantly impacted the finished product. The reason for this analogy is to stress the fact that everyone is creative enough to achieve their wants (McRobbie, 2004). However, at the same time, not everyone can solely create a complete creative work without creative minds and the talented skills of others to make the job a success (Throsby 2007; Cross et al. 1967). Thus, it must be noted that every contribution in any creative work counts for its uniqueness, no matter how minimal, towards the successful completion of the art product. This artwork subsequently generates a commercial activity with monetary outcomes earned by the contributor as a piece of the cake from the major shareowner. These inevitable contributions account for the creative economy system that plays an essential role in the final product. Therefore, each contributor is duly recognised and benefits as an economic agent. According to Throsby (2007), the functioning of a financial system can be said to originate from the value that economic agents place on the goods and services they produce. David Throsby’s statement points to the fact that unless artists place value on the goods and services they produce, they cannot benefit financially from the creative work. The economic agents in any creative work are the individual artistes who are part-players; without them, the outcome would not have gotten that triumph or classic finale.

We refer to creative artists in this context as all the music artistes who get to play a part in a recorded song. The list is not limited to adult human beings or babies but includes any of the following whose sound or noise gets to be purposefully recorded as part of the song:

All these individual contributions must sign the split sheet to determine the percentage due to them if royalties start accruing. This arrangement rewards their intellectual property right embedded in the recorded song or music. The copyright law of Ghana, the world intellectual property conventions and treaties, and all other copyright laws in any country aim to promote creativity and protect creative work (Copyright Act 2005 Act 690, 2005).

The primary music creators include performers, composers/songwriters, arrangers and music producers. It is worth stating that all music creators are musicians; however, not all are creators. It is also common knowledge that musicians and music creators, especially popular musicians, aim to make an appreciable living out of their creativity but then grapple with achieving this aim. This situation is a growing concern among music practitioners and industry players in that musicians ought to earn more money than they currently do (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2021). While on the one hand, some music creators strategically copyright their music to generate extra revenue in addition to live performances, on the other hand, some are only stuck with income from live performances. The sources of making money available to an artiste are numerous: digital stores and Internet distribution (Bennett & Hennekam 2018; Thomson 2013; DiCola 2013), advertisement and penalty from copyright infringement and political use of music as indicated by Schütz (2016). In addition to the above, studio bookings and royalties collections last one’s lifetime and even 70 years after the creators’ death or the death of the last surviving creator for co-authors or co-creators. All these are sources of income for musicians, but not all are recurring and do not consistently bring in revenue. In court cases, payment is relevant as and when one becomes aware of an infringement to pursue it. Live performance income will come in as and when the musician is healthy and faces good touring deals coupled with good weather and, all things being equal, a successful performance.

The music industry presents many challenges and opportunities globally; however, being a musician in Ghana, the challenges outweigh the opportunities. For instance, a musician can become a millionaire in other jurisdictions without travelling out of the home country due to the efficiency of the country’s copyright and royalty collection system (Bennett 2010). In Ghana, for instance, a musician’s attainment of millionaire status is inextricably linked to performing out of the home country at a point in the musician’s career or engaging in another vocation. This adverse phenomenon is partly due to the lack of proper industry structures for royalty collection for practitioners (Acquah & Acquah-Nunoo 2021; Coffie et al. 2022; Collins 2000) and practitioners’ failure to explore the various revenue streams of the music industry. As a result, live performance becomes the primary source of revenue generation for most Ghanaian musicians. It is also worth noting that technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry, disrupting many traditional income revenue streams (El Gamal 2012; Lozić 2020; Negus 2019; Kamara 2018).

A preliminary investigation of the Ghanaian music industry reveals complaints of musicians oblivious of all incomes due to them and their income sources. In another development, some inactive creative artists in Ghana (probably due to old age or ill health) eventually die paupers. We want to state that the above situation is not only peculiar to Ghana but is a global issue about which Pietilä (2017) states as follows:

Surprisingly but sadly, the Ghanaian media space is gradually becoming a begging hub for renowned ailing artistes for support despite their significant contributions to the Ghanaian music economy. The apparent reason for this unfortunate situation is that artistes are oblivious to how the music industry works. However, it is worth noting that modern Ghanaian creative artists are gradually becoming aware of the music business (creative economy) and are exploring the various revenue streams of the music industry. The music industry comprises three parts: recording, publishing and live performance (Hesmondhalgh 2007). Interestingly, the audio recording industry is inarguably the most lucrative but paradoxically poor in Ghana. This situation is so because creative artists within the recording industry fail to employ the music split sheet. The split sheet is a contractual agreement form that spells out the revenue percentages each contributing creative artist is entitled to within a recording project.

Royalties from record production in Ghana mainly benefit the singer-songwriter (composer-performer) and the recording artiste. However, the music producer and the other part players can benefit if all the work’s contributors sign a split sheet. In other words, in the absence of a signed split sheet, the music producer and the other part players only benefit from the money they are paid for the record production and do not receive royalties from the record, as stated earlier. For instance, studio producers and engineers charge for studio booking and recording. They also deploy their creative skills to direct the recording until the final work is done. The process of recording production does not require the engineer to play any instrument or sing part of the song either as a supporting vocalist or backing vocalist. The moment a studio engineer or a music producer assumes the role of a vocalist, instrumentalist, arranger or songwriter in the recording process, s/he becomes part of the recorded song owners. It is worth noting that many Ghanaian music producers (studio engineers) have assumed the role of vocalist, instrumentalist, arranger and songwriter in many recorded songs. However, these roles did not translate into significant financial gains, probably because they did not employ the split sheet with the artistes they produced during the production process. Therefore, one counter-argument that could arise is how to access funds generated by the split sheet. The above situation elicits the question: how informed are Ghanaian music producers and practitioners about the split sheet, and to what extent have they explored it in their daily work? Against this background, we investigate the split sheet’s awareness and benefits among Ghanaian music producers and practitioners in the recording industry and the extent to which they have explored it.

This study is an extract from more extensive work on Ghana’s Recording Industry and Soundscape. In approaching this study, we employed a mixed-methods in that the mode of inquiry for data collection and analyses is both numerical and narrative (Leech & Onwuegbuzie 2009; Creswell & Plano Clark 2018; Gunasekare 2015; Caracelli & Greene 1993). The qualitative and quantitative data were both collected concurrently. The design involves using a questionnaire for music producers, session musicians, recording artistes and interviews with stakeholders of the recording industry in Ghana. We used a documentary search to discuss the split sheet in the Ghanaian recording industry. We interviewed renowned Ghanaian music producers (sound engineers) to describe their views on the music split sheet. We also used online questionnaires to get the opinions of as many as possible, Ghanaian music producers and practitioners about the extent to which they have explored the music split sheet. Data for this study were collected between September 2021 and August 2022.

In this study, we have brought to the fore the level of awareness of the split sheet among Ghanaian music producers and practitioners in the recording industry. The summary grouping indicates that most of the music produced between 1960 and 2022 has only ten individuals who have ever signed a split sheet of the total respondents of 218. Unfortunately, ignorance about the split sheet benefits stood at 92.7% as of August 2022. However, the insightful revealing statements from prominent music producers in Ghana suggest what most music practitioners are experiencing. In other words, music producers and practitioners are not getting any royalties for their works. Considering our findings, we conclude that the low awareness of the split sheet among Ghanaian music producers and practitioners compromises the decorum of the business side of creativity in the Ghanaian recording industry. Therefore, we recommend that more intensive education be undertaken to sensitise Ghanaian music producers and practitioners to the benefit of the split sheet in their daily work to enhance revenue generation.