As the Car­ni­val sea­son kicks in­to high gear, Kees sits atop the COTT Top 20 playlist for the past two weeks, ac­cord­ing to da­ta pro­vid­ed by the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Kes the Band artist is hold­ing down the top two spots with his 2020 con­tri­bu­tions Boss La­dy and Dear Pro­mot­er with Voice.

Al­so heat­ing up the charts are Machel Mon­tano with three en­tries: Play Hard­er, Brace and Stink Be­hav­iour, Na­dia Bat­son, Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Su­per Blue and Swap­py.

This list is com­piled week­ly by COTT through use of the me­dia mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem VER­I­C­AST which us­es au­dio fin­ger­print­ing and tracks mu­sic us­age across lo­cal ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions.

The sea­son is not with­out its chal­lenges, how­ev­er. As the is­sues of copy­right mu­sic li­cences for the use of these and oth­er songs has be­come a hot but­ton is­sue.

COTT is the on­ly Col­lec­tive Man­age­ment Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CMO) au­tho­rised to is­sue li­cences for the use of these and thou­sands of oth­er lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al songs. As in­di­cat­ed in the Top 20 List­ing, the right­sown­ers to these songs have as­signed to COTT the rights to col­lect roy­al­ties on their be­half. It means that, the li­cence fees paid to COTT are processed and then paid as roy­al­ties to the mu­sic cre­ators.

John Arnold, Pres­i­dent of COTT weighed in on the is­sue, “Over the past few weeks, there have been or­gan­i­sa­tions claim­ing that they can is­sue DJ and Event Li­cences for Car­ni­val. COTT is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­fut­ing these claims.”

“These or­gan­i­sa­tions do not have the au­thor­i­ty to col­lect on the be­half of COTT’s mem­bers. Fur­ther­more, when li­cence fees are paid to these or­gan­i­sa­tions COTT mem­bers and mem­bers via rec­i­p­ro­cal agree­ments do not re­ceive any re­mu­ner­a­tion,” Arnold con­tin­ued.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, COTT’s li­cence does not on­ly cov­er lo­cal mu­si­cal works but re­gion­al mu­sic through our rec­i­p­ro­cal agree­ments with Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and is­lands of the East­ern Caribbean. Fur­ther afield, COTT’s has agree­ments with in­ter­na­tion­al CMOs which op­er­ate in the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da, Ger­many, Japan and more,” ex­plained Arnold.

“So over the Car­ni­val sea­son, I’d like mu­sic users to un­der­stand that they must get a COTT Li­cence. Be­cause, on­ly a COTT li­cence al­lows you to play to the “COTT Top 20 hits” of the sea­son as well as the biggest hits of the sea­son. I would al­so like to re­mind mem­bers of COTT that it is in their best in­ter­est to con­firm with pro­mot­ers that they have ob­tained a COTT li­cence” end­ed Arnold.

Event pro­mot­ers, DJs and Venues Own­ers are be­ing en­cour­aged to con­tact the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment at li­cens­ing@cott.org.tt or call 624-COTT in or­der to ob­tain the li­cence that gives re­mu­ner­a­tion to the law­ful right­sown­ers.