PopArabia's Rights Agency ESMAA Announces Licensing Deal With Anghami

ESMAA, an Abu Dhabi-based music rights management company representing global music stakeholders in the Gulf and Middle East region, has recently announced a licensing deal with MENA-focused streaming platform Anghami.

Originally launched in 2020 by MENA-based music publisher PopArabia, ESMAA is considered the first music rights management company operating in the Gulf area, providing a holistic solution to the licensing gap in the music ecosystem and reshaping the future of the music industry in the MENA region.

ESMAA’s deal with Anghami marks the ‘first of its kind’ partnership between international independent music publishers and a domestic streaming service in the MENA region. It also marks the end of a legal dispute between ESMAA and the music streaming platform, which the music rights company filed against Anghami in 2022 for allegedly streaming unlicensed songs.

“It’s the first time that an entity in the Gulf has been able to administer a deal of this kind, with the magnitude of the global industry flowing through a local entity,” Hussain ‘Spek’ Yoosuf, CEO of ESMAA and PopArabia stated in the announcement.

Within its deal with Anghami, ESMAA represents PopArabia’s Arabic music catalog and its global sub-published repertoire as well as the repertoire of IMPEL, an international collective which represents the digital music publishing rights of 57 independent music publishers across 14 territories.

Earlier in 2024, PopArabia also assumed the role of sub-publisher for all of Reservoir’s copyrights in the region, including collecting and distributing royalties and licensing music for sync.