Kenya’s royalty reset: provisional licences, real payouts

Mar 26, 2026 | Industry News

A sunlit office desk overlooks a cityscape with tall buildings. On the desk are a licence agreement document with a red stamp, a pen, glasses, paperwork, a calculator, stacked folders, and notes on new tariffs and real income tests.

Kenya’s royalty system did not change in one neat stroke

Over roughly a year, Kenya’s music royalty market moved through several different operating models. In June 2024, the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) backed a single-CMO structure for music rights, a move that immediately triggered legal and market resistance. By April 2025, after court and tribunal interventions, the regulator had shifted to six-month conditional provisional licences for three CMOs. By October 2025, the market had narrowed again, this time into a one-year licensing framework for two organisations, with stricter operational conditions and actual payouts already on the table.

That is what makes Kenya’s recent royalty story more than a licensing dispute. The real change was structural. Licensing authority, collection systems, member verification, tariff consultation and distributions all started moving at once, which meant reform became visible not only in policy language but in whether money was actually being collected and paid.

From court-managed transition to provisional licensing

In April 2025, following a High Court ruling on 3 April and an earlier Copyright Tribunal decision, KECOBO granted six-month conditional provisional licences to KAMP, PAVRISK and MCSK. The conditions were not minor. The CMOs were required to verify members and works within two months, collect through a transparent ICT system rather than manual processes, submit monthly reports, account for royalties collected during the disputed period, and show that distributions complied with the 70/30 split.

That mattered because it changed the argument. The question was no longer only which organisation had the right to issue licences. It was also whether the underlying collection and distribution machinery could be made more transparent, more auditable and more legible to both rights holders and users.

June brought a clearer market signal

By May, KBC Digital was already framing the shift in practical terms, presenting PAVRISK’s provisional licence as part of an effort to reduce confusion among broadcasters, hospitality businesses, event organisers and public transport operators over who could lawfully issue licences and collect royalties.

Then, in a 16 June 2025 public update, KECOBO gave the market a sharper operational signal. It said only PAVRISK and KAMP were licensed to collect, while MCSK’s position had been withheld because of internal disputes. It also stated that valid invoices and licences had to come from PAVRISK or KAMP and be accompanied by the corresponding Kenya Revenue Authority e-TIMS certification. That update mattered because it translated a legal and regulatory dispute into day-to-day market practice: who could invoice, who could collect and what a valid licence now looked like.

Money started moving before the system was fully settled

The clearest sign of change came when distributions began to show up publicly.

On 22 August 2025, TNX Africa reported that KAMP had distributed KSh4.9 million in interim royalties from collections made in May and June. It also reported KAMP’s position that 70% of those collections went to rights holders and 30% to administration. That split was significant because it turned reform rhetoric into a measurable payout rule.

Less than a month later, Music In Africa reported that PAVRISK had made its first royalty distribution: KSh24.018 million to 5 887 verified and approved members following its inaugural AGM on 16 September 2025. At that point, the reform stopped looking like a licensing story alone. It had become a distribution story, where member validation, repertoire data and payment details had to work together for money to land.

October pushed the reset further into infrastructure

The next major step came in October 2025. After inviting new applications in September, KECOBO said it had evaluated six submissions and awarded one-year CMO licences to KAMP and PAVRISK, effective 5 November 2025.

Again, the detail mattered more than the headline. The regulator’s conditions went beyond naming the successful applicants. The two CMOs were required to provide updated and verifiable member and works data, use a government-approved ICT system for collections, licensing, media monitoring and distributions, and establish trust and paybill accounts structured to ringfence 70% for artists. Revised consolidated music and audio-visual tariffs were also moving through consultation and validation during this period, showing that the reset was not only about who could collect, but also about how the market would be priced and administered going forward.

What changed in one year

Kenya moved from a heavily disputed licensing model to a more rules-based operating framework in which collection authority, compliance requirements and distributions became more visible and more testable.

The change was not that every dispute disappeared. It was that the system became harder to describe in purely abstract regulatory terms. By late 2025, there were clearer collection routes, more explicit invoice requirements, interim royalties from one CMO, a first major payout from another, and tighter conditions around data verification, digital collection and artist ringfencing. The royalty system was still being contested, but it was also becoming more operationally concrete.

Why Kenya matters as a regional case

Kenya is a useful regional case because it shows how quickly a royalty market can shift when regulators, courts, CMOs and payout structures all change at once. A new licence on paper does not pay anyone by itself. Verified memberships, clean works data, workable collection systems and enforceable payout rules are what turn institutional change into money that creators can actually receive.

That is the broader lesson in Kenya’s reset. The story is not only about which CMO won or lost at a particular moment. It is about how royalty reform becomes real only when licensing, data, collection and distribution start working as one system.