Lo­cal mu­si­cians and man­agers of per­for­mance venues in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons can now book live acts and make pay­ments on­line via AMPT—a new app de­vel­oped by Mu­sicTT, an agency of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. The AMPT app which was launched on Sep­tem­ber 6, by Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Sen­a­tor Paula Gopee-Scoon, was de­signed by lo­cal de­vel­op­ers Lee Ale­ong and An­gel Stew­art for use by cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. Afi­ciona­dos of Live Mu­sic can al­so check the app to see where a favourite artiste/group is per­form­ing.

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon laud­ed the work be­ing un­der­tak­en by Mu­sicTT to in­crease the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of lo­cal mu­si­cians not­ing that the de­vel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship align per­fect­ly with the Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy/Vi­sion 2030. “The Gov­ern­ment,” she added “is con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing glob­al trends to keep abreast of the strate­gies re­quired to mod­ernise and mon­e­tise our lo­cal tal­ent. The Mu­sic In­dus­try adds fur­ther val­ue to the econ­o­my by fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty while pro­vid­ing a vi­able plat­form for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and gen­er­a­tion of ex­port earn­ings.”

The Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter al­so laud­ed the video pro­mot­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) rights on which Mu­sicTT col­lab­o­rat­ed with the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice (IPO) of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs and the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WIPO).

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon em­pha­sised that “...a func­tion­ing sys­tem of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights is fun­da­men­tal to suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and must be up­held in or­der for our Mu­sic In­dus­try to thrive....It is im­por­tant for the artiste to be ac­knowl­edged and be paid fair­ly for his or her cre­ation.”

Chair­man of Mu­sicTT John Arnold in­di­cat­ed that the main fo­cus of the agency was to fa­cil­i­tate the gen­er­a­tion of wealth among lo­cal cre­atives through its ac­tiv­i­ties. The AMPT app, he stat­ed, sig­nals the fu­ture of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my of T&T. He urged per­form­ers and man­agers of venues in Port-of-Spain to utilise the AMPT app to make avail­able to the pub­lic the va­ri­ety of live mu­si­cal tal­ent ac­ces­si­ble lo­cal­ly.

AMPT sup­ports artiste reg­is­tra­tion, venue book­ings and al­so pro­motes live mu­sic events and per­for­mances in and around the cap­i­tal city. Peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in book­ing a live act can down­load the app which is avail­able for both Ap­ple and an­droid de­vices, pe­ruse venues and per­form­ers’ in­for­ma­tion, look at past per­for­mances and au­di­tions pri­or to artist se­lec­tion.