{"id":18812,"date":"2026-08-16T12:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T12:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/rwanda-dissolved-royalty-society-new-rules-biggest-2026-songs-three-countries\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T12:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T12:12:07","slug":"rwanda-dissolved-royalty-society-new-rules-biggest-2026-songs-three-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/rwanda-dissolved-royalty-society-new-rules-biggest-2026-songs-three-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Rwanda Dissolved Its Royalty Society and Wrote New Rules. Its Biggest 2026 Songs Were Made in Three Countries."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rwanda music royalties are now governed by a 2024 intellectual property law, a royalty order approved by Cabinet in March 2026 and collective management rules published in July, and there is still no society distributing the money.<\/p>\n<p>That gap is the most important fact for any Rwandan artist planning a release this year.<\/p>\n<h2>What Rwanda changed on paper<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Law n\u00b0 055\/2024 of 20\/06\/2024<\/strong> on the Protection of Intellectual Property hit the Official Gazette on 31 July 2024, repealing the 2009 law, as <a href=\"https:\/\/cfllegal.com\/rwanda-enacts-a-new-intellectual-property-law-an-analysis-of-law-n-055-2024-of-20-06-2024-on-the-protection-of-intellectual-property\/\">CFL Advocates<\/a> set out.<\/li>\n<li>Article 301 lets government, schools and religious institutions use artistic works without the author&#8217;s consent or payment, provided the public performance is not for profit. Creators pushed back hard, as <a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202408220300.html\">Emmanuel Gatera reported for The New Times<\/a> in August 2024.<\/li>\n<li>A ministerial order on royalties was approved by Cabinet in March 2026.<\/li>\n<li>RDB CEO Jean-Guy Afrika confirmed at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mod.gov.rw\/docs-media\/news-detail\/moya-convenes-roundtable-on-sustainable-monetization-pathways-for-rwandas-creative-industry\">3 July 2026 Ministry of Youth and Arts roundtable<\/a> that the government has published the Collective Management Organisations Ministerial Order, with the Intellectual Property Office being strengthened to operationalise it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>CMO means collective management organisation, the body that licenses radio, TV, bars and venues and pays songwriters their performance share.<\/p>\n<p>Three days later, Parliament said the plumbing does not work yet. On 6 July 2026, committee chair Emma Rubagumya Furaha said &#8220;there is a need to establish effective collective management organisations or mechanisms,&#8221; warning implementation remains weak, per <a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202607060032.html\">Charles Nyandwi in The New Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>The hole RSAU left<\/h2>\n<p>The Rwanda Society of Authors was dissolved in 2025 over mismanagement. Minister of Youth and Arts Abdallah Utumatwishima told a parliamentary committee on 22 April 2025 that a replacement body would be created by law, and later said the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newtimes.co.rw\/article\/33298\/news\/rwanda\/national-arts-policy-expected-in-may-says-minister\/amp\">national arts policy was expected to launch by May 2026<\/a>, alongside a Rwanda Arts Council built with UNESCO.<\/p>\n<p>The number that should focus everyone: RSAU distributed under Rwf 90 million, roughly 65,000 dollars, since 2017. The New Times set that beside South Africa&#8217;s SAMRO, which distributed R429 million in 2024, in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newtimes.co.rw\/article\/33898\/entertainment\/the-black-box-problem-how-africas-music-money-is-lost-in-global-systems\/amp\">its March 2026 piece on Africa&#8217;s black box problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Private operators have moved into the vacuum. Kigali firm Dajah Group registers Rwandan compositions across more than 120 territories, with founder Herv\u00e9 Muvunyi telling the same paper that local players &#8220;were focused on the master revenue, while the underlying composition was earning money globally that was simply being lost.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>The export money is already moving<\/h2>\n<p>While the domestic system stalls, Rwandan writers are showing up on regional hits.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify&#8217;s Global Impact List for the first half of 2026, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitalfm.africa\/spotifys-global-impact-list-reveals-the-rise-of-east-africas-cross-border-sound\/\">covered by Capital FM Africa on 12 August 2026<\/a>, ranked &#8220;AYAYAAH&#8221; by Joshua Baraka, Bien and Rwanda&#8217;s ELEMENT Ele\u00e9eh at number two, and &#8220;Pom Pom&#8221; by Diamond Platnumz, Bruce Melodie and Brown Joel at number four.<\/p>\n<p>Both are three-country records. That means splits crossing Rwandan, Ugandan, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Nigerian writers, and revenue landing in markets whose societies do function.<\/p>\n<h3>What Rwandan acts should lock down this quarter<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Sign a split sheet before release, not after the song charts. Percentages, legal names, IPI numbers.<\/li>\n<li>Register compositions with a publishing administrator that can reach foreign PROs. A PRO is a performing rights organisation, the overseas counterpart to the CMO Rwanda does not yet have running.<\/li>\n<li>Get an ISWC on the composition and a clean ISRC on every master. Without both, cross-border matching fails silently.<\/li>\n<li>Insist your distributor delivers DDEX-standard metadata. DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the messaging format that carries your credits to each store.<\/li>\n<li>Ship to Boomplay, Audiomack and YouTube Music alongside Spotify and Apple Music. East African listening is not Spotify-only.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Where this leaves independent labels<\/h2>\n<p>Rwanda&#8217;s CMO will eventually collect the domestic broadcast and venue money. It will never collect what a Kigali writer earns from a Lagos co-write, because that has always depended on metadata, not on Kigali.<\/p>\n<p>That part a distributor controls. Accurate contributor data, multi-level splits visible in the artist&#8217;s own royalty dashboard, and delivery to the regional platforms East African audiences actually use are what turn a three-country hit into three countries&#8217; worth of income.<\/p>\n<p>Related reading: <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/uganda-paid-58000-music-royalties-biggest-artist-passed-diamond-platnumz\/\">Uganda Paid Out About $58,000 in Music Royalties Last Year<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/nairobi-has-africas-youngest-streaming-audience-kenyas-royalty-system-spent-the-year-in-court\/\">Kenya&#8217;s Royalty System Spent the Year in Court<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/top-music-distribution-platforms-for-rwandan-artists\/\">Top Music Distribution Platforms for Rwandan Artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rwanda music royalties now run on a 2024 IP law, a Cabinet royalty order and CMO rules published in July, yet no society is distributing. What the RSAU shutdown, the new rules and East Africa&#8217;s cross-border hits mean for independent artists registering splits.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[518],"tags":[118,503,24,341,2739,112],"class_list":["post-18812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-policy-legal","tag-africa","tag-copyright","tag-music","tag-royalties","tag-rwanda","tag-spotify","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Rwanda Dissolved Its Royalty Society and Wrote New Rules. 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