One of the defin­ing as­pects of T&T arts and cul­ture is un­doubt­ed­ly the mu­sic. How­ev­er, de­spite such vi­brant ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place pre­dom­i­nant­ly with­in the arts, en­ter­tain­ment and mu­sic in­dus­tries, a gap still ex­ists in the ad­min­is­ter­ing of mu­sic rights to a crit­i­cal group of peo­ple, ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­ers and per­form­ers of record­ed works.The Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­duc­ers and Per­form­ers (TAPPs) is a not-for-prof­it col­lec­tive man­age­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion, au­tho­rised legal­ly to ad­min­is­ter re­lat­ed rights in T&T. Re­lat­ed rights, al­so known as neigh­bour­ing rights, are rights that ex­ist in record­ed mu­sic and owned in­vari­ably by the ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­ers and the per­form­ers of mu­si­cal works.

Per­form­ers and ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­ers are el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive resid­ual pay­ments for the sound record­ings in which they have a di­rect stake, that is, they have ei­ther pro­duced and/or sung lead or back­ground vo­cals, or played an in­stru­ment on the record­ed work in ques­tion.TAPPs' core busi­ness is there­fore not to be con­fused with copy­right, which is owned by com­posers, au­thors and pub­lish­ers of mu­sic com­po­si­tions and, as a re­sult, gov­erned by oth­er agen­cies.

Mu­sic users, in­clud­ing peo­ple who broad­cast record­ed mu­sic, those who play their ra­dios and tele­vi­sions in restau­rants, bars, ho­tels, of­fices and oth­er pub­lic spaces, must be­come aware that au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the own­ers of re­lat­ed rights is now re­quired by law.In each of the cas­es cit­ed above, a re­lat­ed rights li­cense, is­sued by TAPPs, has now be­come ap­plic­a­ble. Along with lo­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion of re­lat­ed rights, TAPPs al­so en­hances the op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­creased rev­enue to be chan­nelled to its mem­ber­ship.

• For more in­for­ma­tion please con­tact David Bereaux, project man­ag­er, TAPPs, on 799-7930 or e-mail: tapp­strinidad@gmail.com