If you have listened to Namibian musicians complain, it is always about the Namibian Society of Composers and Authors of Music (Nascam).
People blame the organisation for low CD sales, lack of gigs and poor radio play. It’s as if Nascam is the parent of every creative individual with a microphone.
This shows a massive misunderstanding of what the organisation actually does. Here is the correct view: Nascam is licensed to collect and distribute royalties to songwriters, composers and authors of music.
It is not meant to solve all the music problems in Namibia. To understand why, we need to look at how these structures work globally and locally.
Around the world, the music industry relies on collective management organisations (CMOs).
A CMO is supposed to track who plays a song and collect money from every single radio station, bar or concert promoter.
This is hard for one person to do alone and the solution is to do it “collectively”. Creators group together and hand over the right to manage their works to a central body. This organisation then issues licenses to anyone using the music, collects the fees, and distributes the money to the rightful owners.
That is the entire job description. They manage rights, collect cash and pay it out based on usage. Nothing more and nothing less.
People think Nascam represents anyone who holds a microphone or dances on a stage. That is simply false. By definition, Nascam narrows its scope strictly to its members, and those members are songwriters, composers and authors of music.
There is a huge difference between being a performer and being a songwriter. You can be the greatest singer on local radio but you cannot expect anything from Nascam if you are not the composer or writer of the music you perform.
It is another story if you wrote the music, too, which is normal in Namibia. If that’s the case, you must relate to Nascam only when it comes to your songwriting and compositions and not all your other problems.
Performers have different rights, but Nascam was built specifically to manage the rights of the people who author the music itself.
Expecting them to fight for performers who do not write their own material is like asking a baker to fix your car.
We have to look at the law to see the boundaries clearly. Nascam operates as a royalty collector first and foremost. They received their mandate and licence under the Copyrights Act of 1994.
The law gives them the authority to administer the rights of the creators, issue licences to businesses that use the music, and collect the resulting royalties.
The legislation does not license them to be a booking agency, a record label, an artist management company or a social welfare department.
It is understandable that the lines become blurred since the industry is small and intertwined.
Sometimes collective management groups try to offer additional services to help their members. They might want to run cultural funds, offer legal advice, advocate for broader artist rights, or host industry workshops. While these gestures seem nice on paper, they are ultimately an indulgence.
Every moment and every dollar spent on these outside activities keep them from doing their actual, licensed job. Royalty collection is a tough, administrative and highly demanding task. It requires focus and strict data management. When the organisation steps outside this mandate, they fail at the one thing they were legally created to do.
At the end of the day, Namibian songwriters need a fully functional royalty collector. They definitely do not need a superhero for the entire entertainment sector. If we understand that Nascam exists solely to track usage, collect licence fees and pay composers, we can judge them on those specific metrics alone. Let’s agree to demand efficiency in collection and fairness in distribution, but asking Nascam to fix a completely broken music industry is just wrong.
