The Uganda Performing Rights Society told its members in June that it would distribute UGX 216 million in 2025 royalties, up from UGX 127 million the year before. At August 2026 rates of roughly USh3,728 to the dollar, that is about $58,000 for an entire national repertoire.
Then the individual payments landed, and the arithmetic got personal.
Weasel Manizo posted his: Shs285,498, roughly $77, captioned “UPRS best cheque ever.” Lydia Jazmine told Uganda Online she got Shs1.4 million, about $375, and was not consulted before it hit her mobile money. “You can’t tell me all those years I have worked for Shs 1.4m,” she said. Nile Post reported top beneficiaries would see around Shs3 million, while some members would collect Shs2,000 to Shs4,000. That is roughly one dollar.
Eddy Kenzo, president of the Uganda National Musicians Federation, went public before the money cleared. “Musicians need to know where this money came from and how it was collected,” he told Matooke Republic, warning that without a transparent formula most members would see a fraction of the headline figure.
What the 216 million actually is
CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses music on behalf of many rights holders at once. UPRS is Uganda’s, founded in 1985.
It licenses broadcasters, bars, hotels, event promoters and other commercial users, then splits what it collects. Watchdog Uganda lists those categories as the source of the 2025 pot.
It does not collect your Spotify money. It does not collect your Boomplay or Audiomack money. Those are recording revenues, and they travel on an entirely separate rail through whoever distributes your catalogue.
That distinction is the most consistently misread thing in East African music economics, and it is the same structural split that put Kenya’s royalty system in court for most of last year.
The other Ugandan number from 2026
In March, Pulse Uganda reported that Joshua Baraka had overtaken Diamond Platnumz as East Africa’s most-streamed artist on Spotify, at roughly 1.7 million monthly listeners against Platnumz’s 1.5 million. In 2025 he became the first Ugandan act past one million. He is now nominated for Best African Music Act at the 2026 MOBO Awards.
Not one shilling of that moves through UPRS. It moves through DSP payouts, and DSP means digital service provider, the streaming platforms themselves.
So Uganda’s biggest export earner and Uganda’s entire domestic collective payout are two unrelated numbers. One is growing fast. The other is $58,000.
The law changed in March
Parliament passed the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Amendment) Bill on 17 March 2026, and President Museveni signed it. Per the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, the act carries fines up to UGX 50 million and up to ten years’ imprisonment, adds digital and enforcement provisions, and puts URSB in the role of supporting collecting societies.
Chairman Martin Nkoyoyo told the 18 July annual meeting that UPRS would invest in monitoring technology and fairer allocations, citing a URSB governance partnership running since October 2025.
What a Ugandan artist should do this quarter
- Register with UPRS anyway. Shs285,498 is small, but it is radio and venue income you cannot claim any other way.
- Know which pot is which. Performance royalties come from UPRS. Master and streaming royalties come from your distributor. Confusing them is why artists think they are being robbed twice.
- Get written contracts on paper now. The new act makes them mandatory for copyright transactions, which means undocumented producer splits are a liability, not a handshake.
- Fix your metadata. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the unique identifier per recording. Missing or duplicated ISRCs are the most common reason East African catalogues get paid late.
- Cover the regional platforms. Boomplay and Audiomack are where Ugandan listening actually happens, alongside Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
For context, sub-Saharan Africa’s recorded music market is around $120 million and South Africa books 78% of it. Uganda’s share of the remainder is thin, which is exactly why the delivery rail matters more than the collective.
If you are choosing where to route a Ugandan catalogue, our breakdown of distribution platforms for Ugandan artists and labels covers which ones actually reach Boomplay and Audiomack, and which quietly do not.
