
Needletime in South Africa goes into arbitration
SABC paid its first and only payment in 2017 on needle-time and paid everything to IMPRA and nothing to SAMPRA (who claim to represent 93% of the playlist). SABC is still estimated to owe somewhere between R100-300M ($5.5 - 16.6M) in outstanding needle-time royalties. IMPRA and SAMPRA, DSAC, DCDT and SABC have been in meetings to address the deadlock around payment of needle-time royalties and have reached a consensus as well as an agreement from SABC to make an advance payment to assist members.