Music producers participating in a music forum in Kumasi have suggested to Charterhouse, the organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards (GMA), to consider creating a category for the Best Selling Album of the Year.

The GMA awards scheme has within the past eight years served to advance the development of Ghanaian music by rewarding those who have excelled in the industry. But according to the producers, it was about time a category for best selling album was created.

Producer John Mensah Sarpong, for example, holds the view that every producer aims at making profit and therefore was interested in producing songs which would make money.

“If I produce an artiste who becomes popular and his music becomes popular but fails to bring me the needed revenue, then I cannot talk about success”, he said.

“I seriously think you need to consider a category for best selling album”, Mr Mensah Sarpong suggested at the public forum which was held at the RexMar Hotel in Kumasi last Saturday.

The essence of the forum, according to Charterhouse, was to enable music industry players to make an input in the nomination process of this year’s awards.

This year, the organisers have divided the country into three zones where a forum is to be held in each zone. They comprise Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and the three northern regions in one zone, Western and Central regions in another zone and Greater Accra, Eastern and Volta region also in one zone.

The forum in Kumasi also enabled participants to make suggestions and nominate songs as well as musicians who, in their opinion, deserve to be honoured by virtue of the quality of their work released within the specified time frame.

The views gathered, according to Charterhouse, will be considered by the Nomination and Categorisation Committees who will deliberate on them and place them in their respective categories before they come out with the final nomination list. The calendar begins from November 2006 to October 2007.

Present at the forum were producers, musicians and radio presenters.

Previously the organisers only invited industry players to Accra to participate in the public forum leading up to the organisation of the awards but this year, they have decided to decentralise the process by way of improving the awards.

Responding to the call for the creation of a category for best selling album, Nii Ayittey Hammond, Head of Production at Charterhouse said such a category could only be created if an authentic sales system was in place.

“Currently there is no authentic monitoring system which could enable us to judge but if industry players could come together for us to get authentic sales figures then a best-selling album could be factored into the awards, he said.

Other participants such as Okyeame Kwame also suggested the need to consider creating a category for the best Songwriter of the Year. Sounding philosophical, he said music was both an art of the soul and an art of the mind.
Thus, Okyeame Kwame wanted a shift towards the arts of the mind, where the best song writer within the period of contention could also be awarded.

There were many questions one of which was whether remixes could be considered for an award but Nii Ayittey Hammond, said remixes could not be considered for an award since that could lead to recycling of songs. “It has to be the original song”, he pointed out.

For this year’s awards a category has been created for the best instrumentalist and some of the participants lauded the idea. An instrumentalist is eligible to win the award if he performed creditably on hit songs that were released and achieved prominence in the year under review as well as having influence on the music scene.

There are 26 categories being considered for awards this year. They include Artiste of the Year, Song of the year, Album of the year, Record of the year, Hiplife Artiste of the year, Hiplife Song of the year, Hiplife Album of the year, Highlife Album of the year, Highlife Artiste of the Year, Highlife Song of the Year, Highlife Album of the Year, Gospel Artiste of the Year, Gospel Song of the Year and Gospel Album of the Year.

Others are Pop Song of the Year, Reggae Song of the Year, African Artiste of the Year, Best Collaboration of the Year, Discovery of the Year and Best Male Vocal Performance (solo/group) of the year.

The rest are the Best Female Vocal Performance (solo/group), Traditional Artiste of the Year, Instrumentalist of the Year, Best Music Video Directing of the Year, Best Lyricist of the Year, Record Label of the Year and Recording Engineer of the Year.