A t least 111 musicians are yet to collect their Blank Media Levy royalties from the Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma), two months after the society disbursed the funds.
Cosoma public relations officer Catherine Mitungwi refused to disclose the amount which is still in their custody, but said there is no timeframe for the members to claim their royalties, as such, the society will continue to keep the money.
“This is not a new distribution. We already displayed the total amount the society disbursed. So, to avoid confusion, we are not displaying the total of the unclaimed royalties. This is just for musicians, we are yet to publish beneficiaries from other categories such as literary works and filmmakers,” she said.
Mitungwi said they have made efforts to contact each artist listed as a beneficiary, but their efforts have not yielded much success.
She said: “It may be that some changed their contacts and never bothered to update with our system. Some may have used pseudonyms in registering their music, making it difficult for us to trace them.”
But Mitungwi said the list of unclaimed royalties does not include any of the top earners
Last week, Cosoma published on their Facebook page all names of artists who are yet to collect their royalties, urging them to visit their offices to collect them.
“We are informing all artists who are appearing on this list that have not yet collected their royalties that they should come to our offices and get their money,” reads the Facebook post in part.
In August, Cosoma distributed K1.5 billion in royalties to musicians and authors under the Blank Media Levy initiative covering the period between April 2024 and March 2025.
The list of top earners included Wikise, Phyzix, Zeze Kingston, Saint, Kell Kay, Gibo Pearson, Malinga and Eli Njuchi.
The Blank Media Levy was introduced by the government to compensate artists for reproduced works that are carried in devices such as memory cards and memory sticks.
The distribution system calculates how much one should receive through capturing data that has been collected on the usage of creative works
