Kenya’s long-running fight over creators’ royalties escalated this month after the High Court declined to halt the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) from collecting royalties—despite an unresolved controversy over an alleged Sh56 million (~$433k) shortfall. Two musicians, Justus Ngemu and Saul Esikuri, had sought to freeze MCSK’s role, citing mismanagement and parallel bank/pay-bill accounts inside the organization. The court’s refusal keeps MCSK in the driver’s seat for now but extends a climate of mistrust for artists already struggling with low payouts.
Why it matters: Kenya’s collection ecosystem—split among MCSK (composers/authors/publishers), KAMP (producers), and PRiSK (performers)—was supposed to bring order to licensing and distribution. Instead, the current feud has turned royalty distribution into a legal maze. KAMP’s own interim distribution of KES 4.9m earlier this year underscored how tiny the checks can be at the end of the chain, even when radio, bars, clubs, and broadcasters are paying. For working artists, the “who collects?” question is existential: without consistent, auditable distributions, many revert to shows and brand deals, or accept predatory advances against future royalties.
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The bigger picture is regulatory. KECOBO (the copyright office) and the courts are stuck refereeing disputes that are partly governance failures and partly structural—fragmented licensing, uneven compliance by users, and poor reporting tech. Litigation may set short-term guardrails, but it won’t fix the pipes. Kenya needs standardized metadata ingestion from broadcasters and venues, tamper-proof usage logs (watermarked cue sheets, audio fingerprinting), and a transparent dashboard where every rightsholder can see what was collected, where, and when.
Artists have vented publicly, urging audits and a reset. Some industry lawyers argue for a phased “single-invoicing” model (one invoice per user, split among CMOs on back-end formulas) with periodic, independent audits. Absent that, the current decision simply preserves the status quo: MCSK keeps collecting; artists keep waiting.