Ohene Media (OM) through its YouTube channel fiestaGH has paid royalties to over 30 Ghanaian musicians. The payment is an accumulation of monies made from YouTube over the last three months.

The artistes who received the royalties include Daddy Lumba, Ernest Opoku, Chupa Chops, Appiah, Atumpan, Obaa Pa Christy, Brother Philip, Kodi and Aj, Keche, Ruff N Smooth, Sonnie Badu, Becca, Oj, Cecilia Marfo, Cindy Thompson, and Stay J.

The rest are, Samini, Stonebwoy, Castro, R2bees, Okyeame Kwame, Guru, Sherifa Gunu, Kaakie, Elder Mireku, Vine Praise, 4x4, Praye, Bisa and Diana Haamilton Antwi.

Five other channels, namely Official Sarkodie, Official El, Gh Kings, Eazzyfirstlady, Xtralarge, One Mic, have also received monies for their content on YouTube.

Chief Executive Officer of Ohene Media, Abraham Ohene Djan told the press that, last year, his outfit signed a contract with Google under the Google Premium YouTube Partnership to help monetize Ghanaian content on YouTube.

Subsequently, OM was given a platform on YouTube to upload videos from Ghana with the idea of attracting adverts which would in turn generate revenue for the artistes or owners of the content.

OM was also given a platform to create channels for individuals so they can also monetize and attract adverts.

He explained that contrary to what most people perceive, much revenue is not generated through the number of view but rather the number of times people click on adverts on a particular video.

According to him, “Now we are able to track the use of Ghanaian content on YouTube, on behalf of Ghanaian musicians, and make money from it as well. Previously, people outside Ghana uploaded Ghanaian content on YouTube and revenues never got to the content owners, monies which were lost outside of the country are now being diverted to Ghana.”

He said however, since online advertising which fuels our revenues is still new in Ghana, the monies generated by individual videos are relatively small and so it would be much better for artistes or individuals to create channels to house a number of videos under which they can generate monies together faster than the a single videos.

Abraham Ohene Djan expressed gratitude to Mr. Kafu Kofi Tsikata, a Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank Ghana Office, who linked him up with Google Ghana, for his immense contribution towards the realization of the program and for his continued dedication to the promotion of creative industries over the past decade.