Maltese songwriters and musicians are expected to call on the authorities to revoke a British agency's licence to collect royalties from Malta after an ultimatum expired on Monday.
The Guild for Maltese Composers, Authors, Singers and Musicians (UKAM) had given the Performing Rights Society (UK), which is licensed to collect royalties in Malta, till Monday to find solutions to a number of issues the guild has raised.
But UKAM had not heard from PRS until Monday morning and a spokesman for the British agency said it had no intention to respond.
"The issues referred to by UKAM are the subject of individual discussions with members and it is not PRS for Music's practice to discuss the circumstances of individual claims with anybody other than those members concerned," PRS spokesman Barney Hooper said.
PRS seemed unfazed by UKAM's threat to ask the authorities to revoke their licence.
"While we look forward to continued representation of all writer, composer and publisher members in Malta, we have considerable experience in assisting countries to set up their own collecting organisations and so would be happy to assist any moves to form a local Maltese society if that was the wish of the majority of our Maltese members," Mr Hooper said.
The local organisation is insisting the royalties PRS claimed to have paid Maltese artistes did not tally with what they received. PRS claimed Maltese songwriters received about €175,000 between them for 2007 but UKAM is disputing the figure.
UKAM is also unhappy with the 26 per cent administration fee imposed on writers, which it has described as discriminatory since British writers only paid an 11 per cent administration fee in 2007.
The guild had deemed the 56c rate paid every time a song was played as "too low and unacceptable" and proposed a play rate of €3.26 for the period 2000 to 2007 and €5 from 2008 onwards, with the rate then being revised every year.
On the other hand, PRS had explained that the problem of insufficient royalties stemmed from the fact that few radio and television stations were paying an annual licence fee. However, it was confident Maltese songwriters would soon start getting paid better for their artistic efforts after it managed to get a bigger number of local stations to pay the fee.