What is HMS and what is its basic role?
HMS is known as a collecting society because its primary role is collecting royalties from music users in St. Lucia who publicly perform, broadcast and include music in cable production services. HMS also collects royalties from around the world for its members through reciprocal agreements with other collecting societies overseas. HMS collects the royalties by issuing a licence to the music user (usually charged on an annual basis). In order to then make royalty payments to its members, HMS needs to know what music is being played. Major users, such as Radio St. Lucia, Radio 100 Helen FM and the Wave, give HMS detailed reports of the music they play. For many other performances such as St. Lucia Jazz and Carnival, HMS sends its staff to obtain first hand information on the songs performed. Because of the huge number of public performances that takes place every year in bars, nightclubs hotels etc, it is impossible to track every performance that occur therefore HMS distribute general
