10 years of being in the music industry as a promoter, retailer and now a music artist I am politely asking the general public to sign my petition to help convince Facebook the owners of the app WhatsApp to make changes to WhatsApp to help tackle piracy / music sharing in the music industry. The following actions can be taken by Facebook to reduce piracy and music sharing through their app 'Whatsapp';

1. Removing the music /audio sharing feature in group chats so full songs cannot be shared in group conversations.

2.  Limit the time duration of audio files shared in group chat to under 2 minutes so full songs cannot be shared.

3. Prevent Audio files / songs from being downloaded or taken away from WhatsApp itself. This will prevent songs from being downloaded to email, computers and more, also helping to reduce piracy. 

4. Add Facebook Music to the WhatsApp APP as an alternative. 

Thousands of music artists are affected by music sharing on WhatsApp. There are thousands of groups created on WhatsApp just to share artists music to members in the group. If a group has 250 members that is 250 people that are getting free songs instead of supporting and buying artists work from legitimate platforms e.g. iTunes, Spotify. When music is shared in those groups artists do not receive any royalties or anything at all. This has led to artists not getting paid for their music, leaving music due to not making any money, dying poor and many other negative traits that go alongside working hard and not getting a cent in return. And this is only getting worse , so something needs to change!

Releasing music is business, music artists work hard and they have to feed their families, pay their bills. When groups are created with the intention to share a large number of artists full songs and albums it not only harms the music industry but also the local economy too. 

So please help me to convince Facebook to make changes to WhatsApp to help improve the lives and income of music artists. Without your support music artists and the music industry will keep suffering. With your all help we can make a difference. 

Its time for music artists to thrive again!

Thank you for your time.