Abu Dhabi-based music rights management organization ESMAA has reached a music licensing deal with Anghami, a Spotify competitor focused on the Middle East and North Africa region.
ESMAA represents the repertoire of Middle Eastern and North African music publishers Popular Arabicincluding the company’s Arab Music catalog and its global sub-publishing repertoire. ESMAA also represents promptInternational Music Publishers Group’s deal with Anghami. (IMPEL stands for Digital Music Publishing Rights 57 Independent music publishers everywhere 14 territory.
ESMAA claims that the partnership with Anghami is a “first of its kind” between an international independent music publisher and a domestic streaming service in the MENA region.
The news comes five months after Anghami completed its merger with Middle East and North Africa-based Netflix rival OSN+
ESMAA, which claims to be the first music rights management organization to operate in the Gulf countries, was launched in 2020 by MENA music publisher PopArabia in partnership with reservoir same year.
PopArabia assumes the role of sub-publisher for all games of reservoir Copyright in the territory, including collection and distribution of royalties and sync music licensing.
As a result of ESMAA’s new agreement with Anghami, ESMAA (representing Popular Arabic and reservoir) and the music streaming platform has now resolved. According to reports in early 2023, in December 2022, Abu Dhabi Anghami filed a lawsuit for allegedly streaming unlicensed songs.
Chat with the founder and CEO of MBW, ESMAA and PopArabia Specifications (Hussein Yusuf)Angahmi, who is also executive vice president of international and emerging markets at Reservoir, said Angahmi is a “significant player” in the market.
He added: “We are in the music licensing business. We are really just looking for opportunities to license music and for domestic players like Anghami to reach a solution with us to ensure that independent music is licensed, I think this shows the industry Other companies are sending strong signals.
ESMAA’s deal with Anghami marks the latest milestone in the music rights management organization’s four years in the market.
The organization has agreements to represent rights from rights management associations around the world, including SOCAN (Canada) and PRS For Music in the UK, and also works with numerous publishers and CMOs to represent their catalogs. ESMAA also stands for SESAC, STIM, SOCAN and SoundExchange.
When talking to MBW, Specification explained that the Angami agreement “is a big deal” for ESMAA and the Gulf region.
“We were able to reach this agreement not only on behalf of the PopArabia and Reservoir shows, but also essentially all PopArabia sub-published shows, and ESMAA represented rights groups including IMPEL,” he added.
“In fact, most independent music [publishing] community, we look forward to completing this transaction. This is the first time a Gulf entity has been able to manage such transactions, as the scale of global industry flows through local entities.
MBW recently profiled Spek in a World Leaders interview detailing the executive, who began his career in the music industry as a rapper in Canada in the early 1990s, moved to the Middle East in 2006 and founded PopArabia.
He told us in the same interview that the music rights management organization ESMAA, founded nine years later, “filled a gap in the region’s historical ecosystem.”
Speaking to MBW today (September 12), Spek explained that “prior to ESMAA, there had never actually been a Gulf-based, Gulf-focused rights management entity.”
He explained that before the launch of ESMAA, he “started to see copyright management entities emerging around the world filling the digital licensing gap and in some cases doing a better job than the older, traditional players.”
Speck added, “I started wondering, ‘What’s stopping us from doing something like this?’ We dug into the local laws and found we had the ability to obtain permission from the rights management entity.
“We were advised how best to do this, tick all the boxes, without breaching the local regulatory framework. So we did it.
Discussing his ambitions for the future positioning of ESMAA and the state of music licensing in the region, Spek told us that he wants the organization to be seen as “the preferred operating partner for music rights management in the region.”
He added: “For many years there has been a perception that licensing in the Middle East is really difficult, and that’s true because historically it’s been a fragmented market and there’s never really been a holistic solution that brings it all together. ESMAA changes Got this.global music business
