Here’s some awesome electronic stuff being created by young Kenyans on soundcloud.

From ‘Ma5haria’ – “21 yo EDM bedroom producer from Nairobi, Kenya”

Savid – City Lights (Ma5haria Remix) by ma5haria

and “FooManchu” – Drummer for Last Year’s Tragedy and burgeoning producer using ableton live.

Transformation by FooManchu

Black bloc by FooManchu

What Kenyan developers need to get cracking on is a mobile payment system that links to soundcloud just as Paypal does with Vibedeck.

Here’s why:
 

Just when things were looking grim my prayers were answered with the launch of this awesome platform for Soundcloud. You can host your music free on Soundcloud, Vibedeck encodes your music to MP3 format by linking directly to your music on the servers. You can then sell for free via paypal.

Using soundcloud to host your music and then videdeck to sell it – precludes the need for a CMS, a domain, and self-hosting.

you can embbed it too:

Regulator threatens to revoke MCSK’s licence

The Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) is trying to expand it’s mandate as a government institution into the management of public performance licenses! Initially these licenses were granted to the collection societies of which became organized under the collection activities of the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK). Recently KECOBO revoked MCSK’s license to collect and publicly charged the society with mishandling the of the accounts of it’s members. This is strange for two reasons: one, MCSK’s licensing and collection has been lauded by the local press ever since it was resurrected as an organization under the leadership of Maurice Okoth. Two, KENCOBO is the board that licensed MCSK to have monopolistic control of Public Performance licenses in the first place.

KECOBO declared at a public conference that the audit of MCSK was unsatisfactory for 2 years in a row thereby providing the justification for the revocation of license to MCSK. The accounts ‘are not transparent’ and ‘there must be a reason somebody does not want that account to be open [to the public].’ In response to the claims of poor performance MCSK has cited increases in salaries, increased foreign royalty payments, and increased costs of administration. Trust runs thin amongst the artist community  – A story commonly related to me is of when in 2009 on the verge of a large payout to musicians gathered at the Kenya National Theatre 6 million Shillings in cash stolen was claimed to be stolen in transit.

MCSK recorded 185 million shillings in revenue for the year ending in June 2010. 13 Million Shillings is said to have come from media licenses (i.e. Broadcasters) whilst 171 million shillings was raised from general licensing (Taxis, Restaurants, Cyber Cafes).

According to it’s own auditors MCSK operates under a license restricting the operating costs of the society to below 30 percent of the revenue.

“MCSK has not managed to keep within this limit as the total expenditure in the year 2009/2010 was 76.4 of the total revenue collected.”Musicians spell out royalty terms to broadcasters

Operating expenses accumulated to 137 million Shillings. In the same year 48 million Shillings was paid out to musicians.

Sitting through the whole affair of public condemnation at KICC was a bit of a joke. One member of the audience accused the ‘panel’ of being a Kangaroo Court. I think he was absolutely right.  There were plenty of hand-clappers and yes-men volunteers on hand – many of whom were clearly not musicians. A majority of public comments condemned MCSK and appealed for greater access to royalties and prevention of piracy. The panel’s message was simple: MCSK had to go and be replaced by the government. Yes they were gleeful to acknowledge the many problems facing musicians, clearly this was something that would require much study! No new ideas were brought forward by the panel with how to deal with the regular tussle of piracy and royalty entitlements. Is the whole agenda of KECOBO to suggest that MCSK is the cause of the problems for musicians?

MCSK is a symptom of the illness.  This Government institution is trying to get a piece of the pie from the organization they have licensed. Where has been the attempt to reign in on MCSK’s expenditures?  Both these entities should be brainstorming and consulting to figure out how cut the operating expenditures of this collection activity significantly. Morever, how to make the process transparent to the public and the system of licensing user-friendly to businesses. It is strange that we are asking the government to deal with our problems that are very definately due to the existing market structures.

KRA rejects musicians’ proposal
The way forward.
The Kenya government needs to step in and deregulate the market so that these structures can be reformed by the pressures of competition. Obviously there are positive aspects to the operations of MCSK. It is most doubtful, however, that it is an operation that can maintain it’s collection effort and cut 50% of it’s costs with a change in it’s administration. KECOBO and MCSK are not providing solutions to the problem of effectively distributing royalty revenue and managing copyright protection. The issuance and collection of public performance licenses is a lucrative affair and at the same time expensive to collect and administrate in Kenya.

The Performing Rights Society of Kenya is another body with the same function as MCSK. However, the licensing body for PRSK was KECOBO! Does this mean that one has to be licensed to collect royalties of one’s own copyright? What a kakamayme set up! So currently an artist cannot avoid losing 25% of their royalty revenue to Bambaklaaks, even if they actually receive any???
Another body to collect artistes’ money

The market needs to be opened up. What ought to be done is that copyright holders themselves should be able to issue licenses themselves (some blanket licenses*) to end users.

Although MCSK collects most of it’s revenue from general licensing it needs to drop out from this activity almost entirely because it costs too much for them to administer and it prevents an open market. It should focus on media licensing and blanket licensing to which Musicians would not shy away from subscribing to as a service. In it’s current state the activity is essentially a racket whereby all manner of businesses are coerced into paying another type of business operating license. This type of cartel like activity is bad for business.

Do artists have the right to issue The Mechanical Right and Public Performance Right of their works on their own behalf? With I.T. it is possible that copyright holders themselves could manage the licensing and royalty collection of their work.

Information Technology needs to make a direct link between the copyright holder and the licensee/purchaser of music. This could be achieved by the utilization of a database whereby those wanting to sell copyrighted works can be licensed to do so at a negotiated rate – the channel of this being a phone app (i.e. andriod) and MPESA (etc..). Thereby artists can act as agents on their own behalf, or appoint agents on their behalf and all sales can be legitimized by reference to the database rather than reliance on the redundancy of even a 10 /- sticker. Would it not be easier from the government’s perspective to regulate this?

MCSK ought to act as a competitive player – with capacity to issue large catalogs of copyrighted music to vendors (most certainly media licenses) and take care of foreign royalties. In the meantime publishers and artists can be free to negotiate terms of Public Performance and Mechanical Rights for much smaller catalogs …coming next week…how the ICT sector can make it easy for them to do so!

Stay tuned Kenya,

Jarife Afrika – Tinga by binkhalidsonic

Raw Music International has done Kisumu a good turn by capturing more than a hundred of these little ditties from local musicians on film. The clips are going to be on a TV show of the same name. Check out the mashup (video) at the Busaa den where the Nyatiti goes all glitchy as the Master starts his stacatto fragmentation. CHAPA! Then there is LaFam who has got some real talent in the digital mashup side of things. Great things to come from this lad.
Also introducing Ranking T. Live and direct from the windswept shores of Dancehall’s forgotten coast. Thanks for giving us some strictly Luo flavor.
Raw Music International Theme (Produced by LaFam, Sample from Orono) by RawMusicInternational