Josplay opens the third volume of its Rise Fund on Monday, 16 November, and has named InterSpace Distribution among its distribution partners. The music technology company announced the partnership on Wednesday, 11 November.
The Rise Fund is Josplay’s funding and visibility programme for independent African artists. It runs as a campaign rather than a grant round: artists enter, build an audience over a set number of weeks, and a shortlist is judged at the end. Volume 3 is open to independent artists from any African country.
How to enter
Entry is free. There is no fee at any stage. An artist needs a completed Josplay artist profile and at least one original release live on the platform, which for most artists means going through a distributor first.
The campaign runs for about twelve weeks. The opening weeks are for entries. A public leaderboard follows, scored on a mix of community growth, streams, music quality, social activity and presence on the platform rather than on streams alone. The field then narrows to a shortlist, and an editorial panel picks the winners at the end.
Prizes include cash for the top finishers, along with editorial and marketing support, a mentorship session with a senior music executive, and distribution support. Josplay publishes the full rules and the prize structure at launch.
What it means for an artist’s rights and money
Two points matter more than the prize list for anyone deciding whether to enter.
Artists keep ownership of their music, their brand and their likeness. Entering grants Josplay the right to repost and feature campaign content while the campaign runs, which is what any promotional programme needs in order to work, and nothing beyond it.
Prize money is paid directly to the artist rather than through the distributor. Royalties are a separate matter and are unaffected: streams earned on Josplay and everywhere else continue to be collected and paid the way they already are, on the same schedule and the same terms.
That separation is worth stating plainly, because competitions in this market have not always kept it. An artist who wins should see the prize as a prize and the royalties as royalties.
The second deal between the two companies
InterSpace and Josplay first worked together in August 2025, when InterSpace’s catalogue was integrated into Josplay’s digital service platform and into the African Music Library, the company’s data-driven database of African music. That was a catalogue deal: it put music distributed by InterSpace in front of Josplay’s audience with accurate metadata attached.
The Rise Fund partnership is a different kind of arrangement. It moves the relationship from catalogue supply to direct support for artists, and it gives InterSpace’s roster a route into a campaign they would otherwise have to find on their own.
Josplay is naming its partners one at a time: A&R Listening Room on 7 November, FlipDistro on 10 November, InterSpace on 11 November.
InterSpace Distribution has said it will share entry details with the artists and labels on its roster when the programme opens. Its own announcement is on the InterSpace newsroom, and Josplay’s platform is at music.josplay.com.
InterSpace Daily is published by The InterSpace Group, which owns InterSpace Distribution.
