HMS representing the Business Community

Music plays an important part in the success of thousands of businesses in Saint Lucia. Major users such as radio & television companies, cable & satellite operators, promoters of events featuring live and/or recorded music, restaurateurs, hoteliers and managers of retail stores all benefit to varying degrees from using music. The Hewanorra Musical Society (HMS) Incorporated, by granting licensees, clears the performing rights for thousands of these businesses and allows them legally to use music to entertain customers and increase profits. In effect HMS saves businesses the money that they would need to spend seeking individual clearances for each song on each occasion that they want to play a piece of music. HMS can claim in this regard to be representing both the music creator and the music user. The society represents more than 650,000 creators of music with a repertoire of over 7 million musical works. HMS is therefore in a position to make the process of obtaining a licence (as the law demands) simple, easy and cost-effective.
Copyright owners give HMS permission (via deed-of-assignments) to license all performances of their works, and in return HMS generates fees on their behalf from businesses which use their music. An HMS licence permits thousands of music users the rights to have access to the works of these three quarter million music creators from Saint Lucia and the rest of the world.

HMS is a non-profit-making organization with the sole purpose of bringing together the people who create music with the people who play music, as economically and efficiently as possible. One can say therefore that HMS acts as a ‘middle-man’ doing the work for music creators and music users alike.
As with any organization, HMS has to pay its operating expenses, which are salaries, rent, professional services, office supplies and all of the other necessary expenditure. Operating as a non-profit organization means that all profit is dispersed amongst HMS members and members of affiliated societies based on logged performances.
Over the watchful eye of a Board of Directors, elected by Saint Lucian Songwriters and Publishers, it is the objective of HMS to conduct the Society’s business as cost effectively as possible to enable a larger surplus (profit) of the money collected in royalties to go to the people whose music was used by broadcasters and other music users.
If you are a business owner requiring a licence, do not hesitate, call HMS today on 451 6436, or contact the Society by fax: 451 6437 or by email at hms@candw.lc
Further details on the above and the HMS tariff can be found on our website (www.hmsstlucia.org) or tune in to Radio St. Lucia every Saturday at 10.00 a.m. for Musically Speaking a public information programme of the Hewanorra Musical Society hosted by TC Brown.