Qismah, a local startup that helps to monitor content and provide stakeholders in the music industry with real-time data in regards to their music, is in a public disagreement with the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHARMO) over the startup’s ability to understand and monitor music for their artists.
The startup which helps track which radio stations are playing artists’ songs, and where their songs are being played geographically, made a public statement refuting the GHAMRO’s claim that the startup lacked the capacity to monitor music for their artists.
“When Qisimah came on board, we decided to do a pilot. During the pilot, it was very clear to us that Qisimah had the energy and enthusiasm to do the work, but they did not have full proof of knowledge of the system,” Abraham Adjatey, CEO of GHARMO said at a press conference held on August 31, 2021.
Qismah’s CTO, Appier-Sign, pushed back against the statement saying that it was untrue that the company lacked knowledge of the system.
On Citi TV’s “The Chat”, the company CTO disagreed with the assertion.
“It is not true that we did not have full proof knowledge of the system. We really knew what we were doing. Even now, the system is still working. Recently we had trials with some ad agencies because it can do ads as well,” he said.
“We even do off-line services. This means we can monitor bars and restaurants as well. That is even more challenging. Because it means every location needs to have a device that can listen and while listening it shoots to the server, the server picks it, identifies and logs,” he further stated.
GHARMO is reportedly currently committed to an agreement with Global Music Monitoring to monitor music throughout the country for us, with the assistance of Ghud Music and recently announced it had acquired digital monitoring systems to help in tracking how songs by Ghanaian musicians are used on radio, television, and digital platforms.
“As much as we are going to have some foreign-based company working with us, we should also be able to develop our local and internal capacity. So we are going to continue working with Ghud Music to develop a proper template as a developing system,” The GHARMO CEO noted.
