DENNIS ITUMBI & EZEKIEL MUTUA CLASH OVER ROYALTY COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION

Digital strategist Dennis Itumbi has proposed government involvement in streamlining the collection and distribution of royalties to mitigate excessive administrative expenses.

In a social media post on his X account, Itumbi  called out Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) CEO Ezekiel Mutua for paying artistes peanuts “Dear @EzekielMutua, yaani, we are paying musicians peanuts as royalties and paying the collectors millions.  and you find nothing wrong with that model? Musicians = PEANUTS/ Per Year. CMOS CEO = 1.3M Per month. Hii apana! Let us empower our artists, like Paul in Scripture, My Eyes are firmly on the finishing line!”

Itumbi highlighted years of inefficiency and vague promises, arguing that the current system is not working, “When E-citizen takes over the collection and distribution of royalties, avenues of fraud will be cut off, and artists will monitor their earnings on a real-time basis and earn their entire rightful reward for their creative works. Such questions by the regulator to MCSK will be a question of the past. @EzekielMutua”

Dennis also reassured artists that they are addressing royalty issues and should be ready for the transition to a digital Collective Management Organization (CMO) “It has been years of guesswork and empty rhetoric. GOK licensing will no longer be an avenue to enhance the misery of artists. Skiza. Performance rights. Creation of new platforms are part of the package.  We are sorting it all. Prepare for a digital CMO, not a CMO with a digital platform. 80% of what MCSK does can be done by a digital platform so that artists pocket the full benefits.”

In his reply, Mutua insisted that the administration of copyright should be handled privately, ”Kenya is a signatory to the Bern Convention as well as WIPO which dictate against interference by the state on administration of copyright as a private property. The Government supports CMOs with enforcement and enact proper policies to protect Intellectual property.

World over music business is run privately through CMOs because the Government is not good at doing business. In fact, this Government has already announced its intention to privatise most of its parastatals to make them more profitable. It would  therefore be a contradiction in terms to meddle in the running of private music businesses.”