DRIVEN by a crisis of conscience, Music Justice founder Errol Henry is on a mission to help musicians claim millions in stolen royalties.

Henry shared that, over a number of decades, he’s watched many Jamaicans in the music business live and die like paupers because they lacked the backing and knowledge about copyright and related matters.

According to Henry, he found himself in a similar position in the 1990s, which led to him putting up a vigorous fight for his intellectual property rights and work. He told the Jamaica Observer that he was successful with that case and it was that experience which birthed Music Justice in 2015.

“By training, I am a songwriter, musician, record producer, label owner, and music publisher. I produce music for Bobby Womack…I produced Lulu, I produced the Jones Girls and I produced Jacki Graham. I’ve been very successful, in my own right, as an independent music maker, and it was during the course of working my way through the industry…I witnessed a great deal of injustice. I had a situation where I had to deal with a very, very large international record company for my label and they didn’t want to sign the contract,” shared Henry

He said he was left with a choice to lose his work or fight.

“I decided to fight them, and that required me to learn things I didn’t know before, learn things about the way corporations work, and learn things about finance. This was in 1999. So having gone through the business of recovering my own rights and getting my own music back, I was faced with something of, let’s just say, a crisis of conscience, because I couldn’t just go back to work, I couldn’t just go back to writing and producing. I was thinking about all the artistes who, in the same situation, can’t get any lawyers to help, can’t get anyone to help,” he recounted.

Henry said he put his own music career on pause to help others get what is rightfully theirs.

“Having got my catalogue back and got my stuff together, I said, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put down the producing, put down recording, mixing, all the things I love to do.’ So I said I’m going to reach out to other artistes, producers, writers, and say, ‘Listen, if you’ve got problems with your business, recovering rights or getting money, talk to me and I’ll see if I can help you,’ “ he shared, adding that he felt he did the right thing by deciding to stand up for other musicians.

The problem of musicians being duped of their royalties is a major one, even in Jamaica, said Henry.

“The problem is extremely, extremely severe because you’re dealing with an industry of haves and have-nots. You have massive, massive global corporations who themselves deal with massive global corporations — all of them want music. Music is a tremendous product because you make it once. Only a few people will watch a film a thousand times during their lifetime, but you can play a record that you like a thousand times, easily. Music is a tremendous product that lasts forever.

“What makes reggae music attractive is that it wasn’t expensive to make. So, there’s a lot of it, and people could make whole albums in one day. It’s a product that is very well received by the public. The people that made it just loved making it. My concern is to recover the money the music made.

“It’s been, culturally, very influential, but the economic benefits of that influence have not been felt by the people that made the music. A lot of them didn’t really understand contract law, didn’t understand business, and didn’t understand how royalties work. What you’ve seen is kind of a buying up of catalogues — this company buys that company and then this company buys that company,” he told the Sunday Observer, highlighting that when this happens, no one really cares about the welfare of the person who originally sang the song or made the record.

According to Henry, the big companies in the business don’t care if people get paid or not.

“The problem is a very big problem. However, we take a very aggressive view. We track all of the usage. We track all these companies wherever they are. We do all the research and then we bring them to court and make them account. We cause them to pay what they owe to the people concerned,” the advocate said.

He said he has a high success rate for the cases he’s taken on, but shared that he could not divulge the names of the musicians he’s helped gain royalties or how many people he’s helped get justice for their music.

“What I’ll say to you is that our success rate, in terms of cases brought and solutions attained, is 100 per cent,” Henry claimed.

“You will never hear of the outcome of cases because we can’t. We actually can’t. At another time, I tell you why we’re not able to do that. It’s mostly for safety reasons why we can’t. We have a number of clients who don’t know that their friend or their associate is also a client, so we never discuss client A with client B — never,” insisted Henry.

He also raised a concern regarding the practice of some artistes and musicians selling out their music for little or nothing. He said that creates a bad impression, adding that too many people have got used to becoming happy after receiving pittances. The policy of Music Justice, according to Henry, is “We’re going to get you all the money that you deserve, not a little shekel here and there.”

He said Music Justice will get the job done, even if it takes a bit of time.

“Our motto, our theory, is if they took everything, you take everything back. We’ve got a situation where there’s a lawyer that I know very well, who was working for a very well-known Jamaican group. He was about to get them a massive, massive settlement and the label offered [them a few thousand pounds] each, and they sold out.

“They sold out their right to ever go back and get what they were due. Not only them, their children can’t, their grandchildren can’t; everyone that comes after them can never go back and get the millions that they were owed. To take a few thousand, and the sort of culture of ‘just give me a little something’ needs to be addressed. It means that you take a little something now, and you pretty much sign up for a lifetime of robbery, which is a tragedy,” he said.

Henry shared that the aim is not just to go after the money, but the music executives who perpetuate this kind of evil against musicians and artistes.

“We pursue particular executives at particular companies who are guilty of manipulating people, and we get them removed from their posts. A lot of high-profile executives no longer have jobs in this business, so it’s quite important that the clients know that. We’re not just going to get them money, we’re trying to take out the bad actors who injured them in the first place. It is important to make the music industry a safer place for our people,” he insisted.

Meanwhile, Norman Gentles, founder of the Musical Heatwave radio station and record label who is based in the UK, told the Sunday Observer that his book on copyright, How to Copyright Your Music: A Beginner’s Guide By Musicalheatwave, can serve as a guide for those ignorant of the subject.

“The main problem is about copyright,“ he said. “It’s educating our artistes about copyright, what it means and what it is. That is one of the main problems. They still don’t understand— even in 2026 — you still have many major artistes who don’t fully understand copyright.”

According to Gentles, many artistes suffer huge financial losses because they are afraid of people knowing that they were robbed of what they were due out of ignorance. He encouraged them to come forward and seek help.