Mu­si­cian and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir John Arnold has been se­lect­ed as pres­i­dent of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (COTT).

In a state­ment, COTT de­scribed Arnold as “a well-re­spect­ed mu­si­cian” who re­ceived a Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold in 2010 for his con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture.

Arnold holds a Cer­tifi­cate in Har­mo­ny and Arrange­ment from the Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic in Boston.

In the sphere of acad­e­mia, Arnold holds a Bach­e­lor De­gree in Man­age­ment from UWI, St Au­gus­tine and an Ex­ec­u­tive Mas­ters of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MBA) from the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

The state­ment said his main pri­or­i­ties would in­clude work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly with the board, fo­cus­ing on li­cens­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, build­ing new al­liances, con­cen­trat­ing on new rev­enue streams for mu­sic and mak­ing sure that roy­al­ties were paid.

“It’s a lot of work, but I am com­mit­ted to the trust giv­en to me and to­geth­er we will main­tain and forge as the num­ber one in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Arnold added.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ayan­na Bel­grave-Lewis said Arnold would bring his ex­pe­ri­ence as a pro­fes­sion­al event co-or­di­na­tor and pro­mot­er.

“He has been heav­i­ly in­volved in the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val and sev­er­al re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties. “Un­der Mr Arnold’s di­rec­tion, COTT will be able to view the mu­sic copy­right in­dus­try from two per­spec­tives —the mu­sic user and the mu­sic cre­ator,” Bel­grave-Lewis said.

Oth­er mem­bers of the board com­prise vice-pres­i­dent Ronald Forde, sec­re­tary Quyn­ton Good­ing, writer di­rec­tor Ken­wrick Joseph, pub­lish­er di­rec­tor Ottmore Mieres, writer di­rec­tor Stephen John Jr, con­sul­tant di­rec­tor Josanne Leonard and hon­orary di­rec­tor Col­in Lu­cas.