Sony Music pulled its catalog from streaming service Boomplay on Monday (December 9) due to late royalty payments, Bulletin board has confirmed.
Several other prominent labels and distributors have also confirmed this Bulletin board on Monday that they have not received recent royalty payments from the agency. Additionally, a monthly payment report published by distributor Symphonic on December 2 notes that payments from Boomplay are excluded from April 2023 to September 2024 “due to delays in receiving statements and/or payments from these partners.” .
Sony's move was a first reported by Pulse NG. A Sony Music representative declined to comment. A representative for Boomplay did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2019, Boomplay announced that it had raised $20 million in Series A funding with the goal of becoming “the number one player in the entire music ecosystem for African music,” according to the CEO. Joe He.
“The African music industry is not like in America or Europe where there is one big company that takes care of thousands of artists.” Phil ChoiBoomplay's head of international acquisitions and partnerships said at the time. “Right now, there are a lot of musicians working independently or with small labels, so it takes time to build a catalog.”
Boomplay inked its first licensing deal with Universal Music Group in 2018. It then signed deals with Sony Music and Warner Music Group the following year, and inked a deal with independent record label Merlin in 2021. Boomplay announced that its streams were counting Bulletin boardthe October 2021 charts.
He, CEO of Boomplay, said Bulletin board in 2020 he believed the service could grow its user base in Africa to 350 million. “It's a huge market,” he said at the time. As of September 2023, the platform said it had 98 million monthly active users on the continent.
Boomplay isn't the first streaming service to struggle with timely royalty payments in recent years. When TIDAL sued in 2021, the complaint revealed that the platform owed $127 million, mostly in the form of unpaid streaming fees to record labels. CEO TIDAL Jesse Dorogusker he said Bulletin board last year that the payment situation had been corrected.
