{"id":9543,"date":"2026-08-03T19:08:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/anghami-built-in-beirut-taken-private-abu-dhabi-lebanon-artists-payout-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T19:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:10:52","slug":"anghami-built-in-beirut-taken-private-abu-dhabi-lebanon-artists-payout-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/anghami-built-in-beirut-taken-private-abu-dhabi-lebanon-artists-payout-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Anghami Was Built in Beirut and Is Being Taken Private From Abu Dhabi. Lebanon&#8217;s Artists Have a Payout Problem."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anghami launched in Beirut in November 2012 as the first licensed music streaming service in the Arab world. Fourteen years on, the decision about who owns it is being made in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n<p>On 2 July 2026, OSN Streaming Limited, which holds roughly 67% of Anghami, submitted a preliminary, non-binding proposal to take the company private at 3.39 dollars per ordinary share in cash. Anghami&#8217;s board formed a special committee to evaluate it.<\/p>\n<p>The stock had closed at 3.25 dollars on Nasdaq the day before, down 18% year to date, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.agbi.com\/finance\/2026\/07\/anghami-receives-take-private-osn-buyout-offer\/\">AGBI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>The company left Beirut. The listening did not<\/h2>\n<p>Anghami moved its headquarters to Abu Dhabi Global Market in 2021, the emirate&#8217;s financial free zone. It still runs offices in Beirut, Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, across 16 markets in the Middle East and North Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The business is not in trouble. Anghami <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/anghami-reports-fy2025-revenue-of-99-3m-up-27-on-3-5m-subscribers-and-landmark-strategic-partnerships-302759534.html\">reported FY2025 revenue of 99.3 million dollars<\/a>, up 27% from 78.1 million, on more than 3.5 million paid subscribers and over 130 million registered users.<\/p>\n<p>The chain that got here is short:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>November 2023.<\/strong> OSN folds OSN+ into Anghami with an investment of up to 50 million dollars, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenationalnews.com\/business\/markets\/2023\/11\/21\/anghami-and-osn-merge-to-create-biggest-streaming-platform-in-middle-east\/\">per The National<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>March 2025.<\/strong> Warner Bros. Discovery closes a 57 million dollar minority investment in OSN Streaming Limited.<\/li>\n<li><strong>July 2026.<\/strong> OSN offers to buy the roughly one third of Anghami it does not already own.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Arab world&#8217;s default music service is now a line item inside a Gulf pay-TV group with a Hollywood studio on the cap table. DSP means digital service provider, the platforms a release actually lands on. Skip this one and you skip the Arab world, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/anghami-hit-99m-and-mena-grew-15-skip-anghami-you-skip-the-arab-world\/\">the argument we made when the FY2025 numbers landed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Lebanon&#8217;s harder problem is not audience<\/h2>\n<p>Lebanese repertoire travels. Lebanese money moves badly. Three structural gaps sit between a Beirut release and a paid royalty statement.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Composition rights.<\/strong> The framework is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economy.gov.lb\/public\/uploads\/files\/4600_3516_9524.pdf\">Law 75\/99 on the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property<\/a>, which lets rightsholders form collective management bodies but requires them to file with the Ministry of Culture first. In practice most Lebanese writers collect through foreign societies. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/saudi-arabia-first-neighbouring-rights-law-august-12-artists-made-3-5-million-on-spotify\/\">gets its first neighbouring rights law on 12 August<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Payout rails.<\/strong> Lebanon still has no capital control law, yet banks have applied informal transfer and withdrawal restrictions since the 2019 collapse, a standoff <a href=\"https:\/\/internationalbanker.com\/banking\/a-long-uncertain-wait-continues-for-depositors-seeking-to-recover-funds-from-lebanons-banks\/\">International Banker<\/a> reports is still unresolved. A distributor that can only pay into a domestic bank account is a dead end.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Label infrastructure.<\/strong> There is very little of it. Beirut Records, founded in 2017 by Hiba Abou Haidar, is one of the few functioning Lebanese label structures. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grammy.com\/news\/5-middle-east-north-africa-independent-record-labels-to-know-beirut-red-diamond\">GRAMMY.com<\/a> profiled it alongside BLTNM in Ramallah and Red Diamond in Tunisia as the region&#8217;s working independents.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The dialect dividend is real<\/h2>\n<p>Mark Abou Jaoude, Spotify&#8217;s head of music for the Middle East and North Africa, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenationalnews.com\/arts-culture\/music-stage\/2026\/01\/23\/spotify-arabic-music-trends-2026\/\">The National<\/a> in January that records leaning into local dialect are outperforming ones chasing an international sound. He cited Morocco&#8217;s ElGrandeToto and Egypt&#8217;s Eslam Kabonga, whose track was the country&#8217;s most-streamed.<\/p>\n<p>That is permission, not a ceiling. It matches what <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/morocco-is-in-the-worlds-fastest-growing-music-region-its-biggest-rappers-money-runs-on-spotify-not-anghami\/\">Moroccan rap earnings already show<\/a>: local language, foreign wallets.<\/p>\n<h2>What a Lebanese artist or label should fix this quarter<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Treat Anghami as a launch-day DSP, not an afterthought. Ownership noise does not move where Arabic listening happens.<\/li>\n<li>Register the composition separately from the recording. Only one of those two royalty pipes runs through your distributor.<\/li>\n<li>Confirm in writing, before signing a distribution deal, exactly which payout method reaches you inside Lebanon.<\/li>\n<li>Deliver the artist name in both Arabic and Latin script, with ISRC and UPC codes attached. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, the unique identifier per track.<\/li>\n<li>Get split sheets signed on diaspora collaborations before release, not after a sync request arrives.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard the major platforms ingest. It is the difference between a track that pays and one that sits unmatched.<\/p>\n<p>InterSpace Distribution delivers to Anghami alongside Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, with royalty reporting broken out by platform and territory so a Beirut label can see which market actually paid. That is the case for regional DSP coverage: the money sits where the listening sits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lebanon built the Arab world&#8217;s first licensed streaming service, then watched Anghami move to Abu Dhabi. With OSN bidding to take it private, Lebanese artists face a harder question at home: rights registration, Anghami delivery priority, and payout rails that actually reach Beirut.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9544,"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":[5],"tags":[2492,7396,307,24,341,112],"class_list":["post-9543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-industry-trends","tag-anghami","tag-lebanon","tag-mena","tag-music","tag-royalties","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>Anghami Was Built in Beirut and Is Being Taken Private From Abu Dhabi. 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