The International Monetary Fund wrapped its 2026 Article IV mission to Georgetown on 31 July. Guyana’s economy grew more than 19 percent in 2025, after averaging close to 40 percent across 2023 and 2024. The non-oil economy expanded about 14 percent on its own.
The law that decides whether a Guyanese songwriter gets paid was written in London in 1956.
Guyana still runs on the British Copyright Act of 1956, inherited at independence in 1966 and never replaced. It is the operative statute behind every radio spin in the fastest-growing economy on the planet.
What actually governs a Guyanese release
Guyana is inside the treaty system. It deposited its Berne Convention accession on 25 July 1994, and the treaty entered into force for Guyana on 25 October 1994, per WIPO Lex.
What it lacks is the machinery underneath. CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses broadcasters, bars and venues and pays songwriters and performers out of the proceeds. Guyana has no functioning one.
Singer and radio presenter Omaiah Hall said it plainly at an International Women’s Day panel in Georgetown in March, reported by Demerara Waves: “Our music is being played on the radio stations quite a bit … and you’re not getting anything out of it.” Veteran theatre producer Gem Madhoo-Nascimento, on the same panel, said creatives “are not getting a penny for it.”
2026 is the year reform got scheduled
APNU parliamentarian Nima Flue-Bess filed a motion this year for a special select committee to review the copyright laws, identify the gaps on digital rights and enforcement, and bring a modern bill to the 65-seat National Assembly within six months.
President Irfaan Ali answered on 22 May: “On the issue of copyright, we have to have some consultation as to what form it will take,” per Demerara Waves. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has previously argued Guyana should wait for a CARICOM model bill.
Writing in Kaieteur News on 4 June, Dr Abiola Inniss warned that compliance-driven legislation is not the same thing as a functional ecosystem. Guyana needs governance architecture, she argued, not just a statute.
In music terms: an act with no collecting body, no tariff schedule and no enforcement staff pays nobody.
Where the money actually is
Guyana’s biggest Spotify footprint does not live in Guyana. SAINt JHN was born in Brooklyn to Guyanese parents and split his childhood between New York and Georgetown, as Kaieteur News noted. He releases through Gødd Complexx, the collective he co-founded, and third-party Spotify trackers put him near seven million monthly listeners. Guyana-resident acts on the same country lists are counted in the thousands.
The most forcefully enforced Guyanese copyright of the last decade also travelled. Eddy Grant, born in Plaisance, won summary judgment in the Southern District of New York in September 2024 after the 2020 Trump campaign used “Electric Avenue” in a video, a case Rolling Stone reported the parties later settled. That happened under US law because Grant controlled his own master and composition.
Same shape as Jamaica, where Drake is the most-streamed artist, and Papua New Guinea, whose biggest global hit was signed in London.
What a Guyanese artist should do now
- Affiliate publishing abroad. With no domestic CMO, songwriter registration goes through a foreign society. PRS, ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN accept non-resident writers, and SOCAN matters because Toronto is a major Guyanese diaspora market.
- Fix splits at delivery. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the standard distributors use to send metadata to stores. Shares that are wrong at delivery stay wrong through every payout cycle.
- Register codes properly. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code. Chutney soca releases with recycled or missing ISRCs lose carnival-season plays in reporting.
- Chase the diaspora. Queens, Toronto and London are where Guyanese listening converts into royalties.
- Keep the masters. Grant’s case only worked because he owned what he sued over.
None of this waits on Parliament. Recording royalties reach a Guyanese artist through a distribution contract and a DSP statement, not through the 1956 Act. The practical fix for Georgetown is a distributor that reports territory by territory and settles multi-party splits on a ledger rather than by handshake.
The copyright bill matters. It just is not the thing paying for this year’s carnival single.
