Kenya: MCSK loses licence to collect royalties

The news was made public in a press statement issued by KECOBO after the board held a special meeting the previous day.

The board ordered the Kenya Association of Music Producers and the Performance Rights Society of Kenya to continue collecting on behalf of producers of sound recordings and performers, respectively. It also approved a new policy that will guide the operations of the collective management organisations (CMOs).

The new policy will be uploaded on the KECOBO website for final public comments, before it is implemented between 16 December and 15 January 2021. It will aim to eliminate some of the irregularities found during the forensic audit into CMOs earlier this year, including negligence, diversion of royalties, fraudulent transactions, ghost and duplicate members, non-compliance, poor corporate governance and policy breaches, among others.

Chairperson of KECOBO Mutuma Mathiu said the MCSK funds would be “held secure until the shortfall is resolved to the satisfaction of the board.”

Mathiu also expressed satisfaction with the recently launched self-licensing digital royalty collecting system and noted that it was serving its intended purpose, which is to provide a better account of the royalties collected, distributed or expended by the CMOs.

“Though there is little more work that remains to perfect the system, over 7 500 new works and over 20 million Kenyan shillings have been collected over the system by CMOs since June 2020,” he said.

KECOBO executive director Edward Sigei said: “All copyright holders and businesses that use music are encouraged to utilise the system robustly by voluntary uploading their work and seamlessly paying for their licences.”

Music users can access the digital royalty collection system by dialling the USSD code *534#.