Veteran reggae artiste Leroy Sibbles says, “Tuff Gong have taken away the food out of everyone mouth” after the relocation of ‘The Joint’ channel.
SiriusXM launched Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Radio and relocated ‘The Joint’ from channel 42 to channel 722, where it can only be heard on the SiriusXM app and on siriusxm.com.
Since the move the channel cannot be picked up by car radios, a platform where most of listener-ship comes from. As a result of this, according to Sibbles the quarterly royalty payments for some veteran Reggae artists, which he described as substantial, have all dried up.
Like Sibbles, some subscribers are not in favour of the move. The Joint channel, which was dedicated to featuring Reggae music from across the world, will now be the home of Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Radio which features Marley’s entire music catalogue, as well as rare recordings, many of which have never been heard publicly. The catalogue is curated by the Marley family.