The Music Copyright Society of Kenya has been given its licence to collect royalties on behalf of musicians after it met stringent conditions set by the regulator.
Its licence was revoked two years ago due to “transparency issues” and given to Music Publishers Association of Kenya.
The Kenya Copyright Board yesterday announced through executive director Edward Sigei that MCSK together with the other two collection management organisations will be “required to issue a joint invoice and collect jointly”.
To secure a licence, MCSK was required to hold elections, restructure its management, agree to a forensic audit of its financial records of the last two years and accept an independent board chairperson to oversee a turnaround. It was also required to obtain new letters of authorisation from its membership and provide further details of its members.
David Muriithi, a former Kecobo board member has been deployed to chair the MCSK Board for one year to assist in reforming the organisation. During the period, he will oversee corporate and management reform. A forensic audit covering a period of two years will be undertaken within six months.
“All the three CMOs (KAMP, PRISK, MCSK) will be required to distribute at least 70 per cent of the revenue they collect as royalties to their members. They were also required to submit their 2019 budgets to Kecobo before the award of a license to control wastage,” Sigei said.
MCSK’s woes began when Afro-pop stars Elani called them out for non-payment of royalties. The trio, in a video that went viral, claimed they were flat broke, yet their songs were topping charts.
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Their video created a conversation about royalty payments. Elani was, however, not the first group to complain about MCSK.
In November 2014, gospel musician Ringtone together with other artists staged a protest during the third annual MCSK award ceremony at the Carnivore grounds against gross misappropriation of artistes’ royalties.
In May 2015, gospel singer Pitson complained that he had only received Sh4,000 as royalties for his hit song Lingala ya Yesu.
This lead to Kecobo’s Board of Directors revoking their licence in 2017. At the time, MCSK had failed to submit a list of its members and amounts received in royalties and its latest audited financial statements (in this case for the year ending June 2016 ).
Under Regulation 16 of the Copyright Regulations, 2004, each collecting society is required to file an annual report and copies of audited accounts.
“In the absence of audited financial statement and a list of members who were paid royalties in the last one year, the board found that the society did not qualify for renewal since an assessment of the society’s performance for the past year was not possible. As such the application for renewal was rejected,” Sigei said.
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