For instance, the Distribution for Public Performance which was collected between June 2019 and June 2020 shows that public broadcasters being Btv, RB1 and RB2 give foreign content more airplay than the local counterparts' 23, 900, 698 works which were used during the time 17, 184, 059 of them are foreign and that makes it 72%. Over P6 million local content was used by broadcasters and out of the total P4.6 million distributed, local content creators only got P1.3 million which is 28% of the total money. Furthermore, at RB2 and Btv top artists who received the highest playtime (seconds) over the period of June 2019 and June 2020 were foreigners being Armand Dreval and Mike Posner. Local artists only got more airplay at RB1 which was dominated by Charma Girl, Nata Capricorn and Alfredo Mos. Surprisingly Vee Mampeezy who has in the past dominated the royalties payments is not amongst the top 20 artists who received the highest playtime at both public radio stations and Btv. According to COSBOSTS value per song based on the duration a song is performed is determined by dividing Net Distributable Revenue (Income) by the total duration (in seconds) the song enjoys airplay over a defined period.
With events having been halted by the COVID-19 this year, it doesn’t come as a surprise to see events contributing only 0.8% percent to the total P4.6 million of Net Distributable Revenue (NDR). Private broadcasters contributed only 0.9 while public broadcasters paid a whipping 80%. Meanwhile, before COSBOTS released the results, local music promoter Gilbert Seagile also known as PPWaPimp was embarking on a campaign to push for 70% local content to be given airplay across all private and public broadcasters. “It is so disheartening to see majority share of money collected by the Copyright Society of Botswana (COSBOTS) ending in the hands of international content producers,” he told Arts & Culture in an interview in January this year. Seagile expressed that the current quota of 60/40 is outdated and is not working for the local creative industry.
