Boomplay and MUSO tackle music piracy in Africa

The Boomplay-funded initiative seeks to remove pirated content that infringes on the copyrights of artists and producers in Africa.

Boomplay told Music In Africa that this is another huge step towards supporting the African music industry in realising its full potential. The partnership will also help artists and other music industry players regain revenue that is usually lost through illegal blogs and downloads.

"Every day, we have artists asking us for help in dealing with their content being illegally distributed and their copyrights being infringed,” Boomplay content and strategy director Phil Choi said.

“Joining forces with MUSO, one of the leading anti-piracy service providers to help industry stakeholders combat piracy in Africa, shows we are willing to act on behalf of our artists and their legal rights.”

UK-born platform MUSO, which says it holds the largest dataset on digital piracy in the world, seeks to change the media industry’s attitude towards piracy.

MUSO CEO and co-founder Andy Chatterley says: "MUSO provides best in class anti-piracy to thousands of music rights holders globally and numerous trade bodies including AIM, MPA and AFEM, and we are delighted to be working with Boomplay and supporting the exciting growth in the African music market."

In an interview conducted earlier this month, Boomplay Africa head of marketing Tosin Sorinola told Music In Africa that piracy still remains one of the biggest threats to the African music industry. She also noted that music lovers are, however, gravitating towards purchasing music instead of downloading it illegally.

The partnership could be a move towards broader efforts by music streaming platforms to fight piracy in the continent. Just a few weeks ago, digital music platform Mdundo partnered with AudioLock to curb music piracy, removing more than 181 000 links to African music that infringed copyright laws.

Boomplay has taken down about 5000 links since partnering with MUSO.