Pan African Licensing Hub seen as key factor in Africa's digital royalty growth

By Emmanuel Legrand

The Pan African Licensing Hub, set up by several African collective management organisations to license their joint repertoire to digital platforms, has been described as a key factor in the future development of digital royalties on the continent.

  South Africa's mechanical rights licensing agency Composers, Authors and Publishers Association (CAPASSO), which has been instrumental in the creation of the project, said the hub is now “the most comprehensive repertoire license available in the region” and is “making access to the region simpler.” 

  The multi-territorial licensing hub currently comprises 17 CMOs across the African continent from countries such as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda, Cape Verde and Namibia, amongst others. To date, the Hub has entered into multi-territorial agreements with various global digital services such as Apple Music, YouTube, Facebook and Spotify, as well as regional DSPs such as Boomplay, Udux, Music Time, and Mdundo. 

  The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) recently released statistics showing that Africa’s digital collections grew 32% over the last four years. CAPASSO Chief Operations Officer Wiseman Qinani Ngubo believes that the growth will continue in the foreseeable future due to growing smartphones penetration and the increasing number of people adopting subscription services. 

A streaming boom

  “We are of the belief that Africa is on the brink of a streaming boom,” he said. “Our numbers indicate that streaming revenue across multiple territories in the region, excluding South Africa, has had an increase of over 62% year on year. This signals the readiness and the appetite for streaming thus we, as CMOs, must gear up to facilitate that access. This growth is directly attributable to the consolidation of rights and repertoire via the hub. Even in South Africa where there is positive penetration, there is still huge potential for growth.”

  David Alexander, founder of South African music publishing house Sheer Music Publishing, tells Creative Industries Newsletter that the idea of the hub dates back to 2013 at the World Creators Summit organised by CISAC in Washington, DC, when African societies got together to provide a single license to Apple's iTunes Store, and has evolved ever since. Initially, said Alexander, the majority of African CMOs had limited success in licensing digital platforms, but the hub changed the situation. 

  “At that point our deal was only with iTunes for the 14 African countries that they were opening their store in and the income was 99% for South Africa and only 1% for the other countries,” recalls Alexander. “Now, of course, the biggest source is Apple Music and the growth in the countries outside of South Africa is accelerating very quickly. Although Apple Music in South Africa is still growing at 40% compared with the prior year, the pan-Africa growth is around 100%, which is very exciting and is a validation for the work that we did from that Summit till now."

Provide metadata

  For Jotam Matariro, CEO of CAPASSO, the hub is poised for growth but there are still challenges ahead. First it needs to incorporate more CMOs from the region, but it also has to deal with specific issues such as proper metadata. “Setting up the hub and putting licenses in place is only but the first part of the process,” said Matariro.

  He continued: “We now need to encourage all our composers across the continent to provide metadata which is key to collections. Without metadata, we will not be able to benefit from the licenses that we have put in place as collections are based on the works information that we are able to identify from the massive reports that the DSPs provide to us on a regular basis. We therefore call upon all music authors and composers as well as publishers across the continent to notify their works so we can make this process beneficial to all.”