The South African Music Performance Rights Association (SAMPRA) has laid criminal charges with the Woodstock Police Station against the restaurant group, Life and Brand Portfolio made up of La Parada, Tiger's Milk, Harbour House, Grand Africa, Lucky Fish and Chips, Live Bait, The Lookout and Old Town Italy for failure to pay the applicable licence fees related to music that SAMPRA manages on behalf of its members, who are musicians and music executives.

According to SAMPRA, these restaurants have been playing music belonging to recording artists and record companies at their stores, unlawfully and have refused to pay the applicable licence fees that would enable them to comply with the prescribed legislative provisions. "This effectively means that the artists whose music is used by these restaurants will not be able to earn needletime rights royalties even though these restaurants are making money in their restaurants as a result of using their intellectual property," said Pfanani Lishivha, CEO of SAMPRA.

The association administers needletime tights on behalf of over 40 000 recording artists and 6 000 record companies. "Over the past four years, we have been earnestly tried to negotiate with Life and Brand Portfolio to pay the licence fees due as we are aware that they are using our members' music in their establishments. Life and Brand Portfolio is, however, adamant in their stance of using music illegally and therefore depriving recording companies and artists of their right to earn income from their music," said Lishivha.

SAMPRA has now opened a case against for their alleged illegal and unethical conduct. "We have a duty to ensure that recording artists get what is due to them," Lishivha said, adding that royalties are an integral part of an artist's earnings and using intellectual property, such as music, without permission and applicable licences is equivalent to stealing from the artists. "We have resolved that over the next few months, we will be pursuing legal action against all music users who refuse to pay needletime rights licence fees. Businesses that want to benefit from the blood, sweat and tears of artists without paying the applicable licence fees are unethical and their directors deserve to be jailed for exploiting artists," said Lishivha.

SAMPRA said they have had discussions with other non-compliant music users such as Food Lovers, JMVR Group and Andiccio, with the objective of getting them to do the right thing and get licences for their businesses so they can use music legally. The association added that a list of compliant business users is available on their website. "Any business that uses music and does not appear on the website may be unlicensed and benefitting from using the intellectual property of artists through music piracy because using music illegally is piracy. Litigation is not our preferred approach when it comes to licensing music users. It really is a last resort. We cannot, in good conscience, allow businesses to exploit musicians while we stand by and watch. Musicians also have families to support and financial obligations to meet. If we do nothing, we would have failed an extremely vulnerable group of people," said Lishivha. Zimoja contacted the Life and Brand Portfolio group but there was no response at the time of publishing