Making it big in the music business is tough all over the world. But for many artists in the Pacific, being popular rarely translates to financial reward, largely because there's been very little, copyright protection of their work. Tania Nugent travelled to Papua New Guinea where radio stations, recording studios and an Australian performing rights organisation are working with musicians to change all that.

Tania Nugent: A local string band is recording an album in the Port Moresby studios of Papua New Guinea's largest recording company. They've got the talent and there's certainly an appetite for this sound among Papua New Guinea's 6 million people, but tomorrow the band will be back out on their boats, fishing for their livelihood.

Only a handful of PNG's musicians are making a full-time living off their talent. Papua New Guinea's copyright act was introduced in 2002, giving local musicians rights to claim royalties, every time their music is used. But there's been very slow progress putting those rights into action.

Peter Aitsi, PNG FM: The challenge is to try and get the musicians to be more aware of their rights under the copyright act. We have artists who are in different centres in different provinces who have very limited access to communication but we need to make a start.

Richard Francisco, CHM Supersound: It protects our artists. It protects ourselves as well, as a record company we own the sound recordings.

Tania Nugent: Recording company CHM Supersound and Radio Station PNG FM are part of an industry group working to establish a national performing rights association, to collect royalties on behalf of PNG musicians. And they've enlisted the help of APRA - the Australasian Performing Rights Association.

Scott Morrison, Australasian Performing Right Association: That's the organisation which was set up quite a long time ago, 1926, to administer certain music copyrights on behalf of their members. We currently have I think 55000 members which are individual songwriters and composers as well as music publishers in the territories of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Peter Aitsi: We're encouraging artists to sign up with APRA at the moment so that if and when the PNG based collective rights group is set up APRA will then pass on the responsibility of managing the copyright collection to this entity.

Richard Francisco: We're finalising our publishing catalogue to be registered with APRA. We have about 3,000 albums under our belt that's about well over 300,000 songs. That would mean that if their music is playing anywhere in Australia or anywhere else in the world where APRA has a connection then proper royalties will go to our songwriters over here.

Scott Morrison: So we've started collecting some revenues and there's a lot of great artists up there who've been members of APRA for quite some time, but they've never actually been able to get any returns from the use of their music in their own country.

Tania Nugent: But having their own collective rights group will also mean PNG artists can start to receive royalties for music used in their own country. There are similar challenges across the Pacific.

Richard Shing, Kulja Riddim Klan: It's quite hard you know. A lot of bands, like KRK, we don't make a living out of music. Even though sometimes we play somewhere , all of us we don't get paid. We play for the love of music.

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu Cultural Centre: Unfortunately, Vanuatu doesn't have any copyright laws so our artists and composers and performers are pretty much unprotected.

Tania Nugent: In Vanuatu, the Cultural Centre is being assisted by New Caledonia's performing rights society - SACENC, who've begun conducting music copyright awareness workshops for local musicians.

Ralph Regenvanu: This workshop is trying to not only push our government to be more proactive in introducing copyright but also get musicians prepared for the next step, which is when there is a law and all the things that have to happen then.

Tania Nugent: CHM Supersound has also held workshops for the artists on its label.

Richard Francisco: Their concerns are mostly with traditional knowledge and how to preserve it, especially with traditional music songs that have been passed on from generation to generation.

Scott Morrison: Copyright laws only go up to a certain point in terms of protecting the interests of traditional cultural expressions.

Richard Francisco: If it's traditional knowledge you can't own the copyright. It belongs to your village, it belongs to your tribe, I guess.

Scott Morrison: There are a lot of younger musicians that are using their traditional knowledge in contemporary expressions of culture and it's really important I know in dealing with communities in Australia and the Torres Strait Islands and Maori communities in New Zealand and the Pacific, there is a real emphasis from the elders that the arts and music in particular is a really good way of connecting their young people to their culture.

Peter Aitsi: We hope that out of this copyright activity that other young artists that come through won't have to go through the difficulties of having to balance a talent which they are very good at and the ability to actually live and feed their families.